Franklan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 24, 2025 8:13 pm
Where did the close to 20% result of AfD come from?
The majority is the former DDR area and oddly a single Landkreis in RP between Mannheim and Saarbrücken.
I spoke with a number of people here in the Oberallgäu. I was rather surprised at the number of those who planned (this was the last few weeks) to vote AfD.
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Alberto wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2025 6:30 pm
Guy at work voted AfD.
He moved to Germany in 1990 when he escaped his native Afghanistan.
What to make of it????????????????
My son works with a guy from Afghanistan, whose wife is from the Ukraine and they both voted AfD. My son tried to talk to them beforehand, but couldn't get through.
Alberto wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2025 6:30 pm
Guy at work voted AfD.
He moved to Germany in 1990 when he escaped his native Afghanistan.
What to make of it????????????????
My son works with a guy from Afghanistan, whose wife is from the Ukraine and they both voted AfD. My son tried to talk to them beforehand, but couldn't get through.
Just trying to get my head around this - doubly strange with the Ukrainian wife. The only explanation I can imagine is that some immigrants consciously or unconsciously wish to demonstrate their "patriotism" by voting for right-wing parties that demonise foreigners / immigrants - as in the USA where quite a number of Afghan-Americans voted for Trump. Caveat emptor and all that...
Last edited by john_b on Tue Feb 25, 2025 11:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I think people like this see themselves as being different than the minorities/immigrants that are in the news for causing trouble, claiming benefits, etc. because they have lived here for a long time, pay taxes, etc. or whatever reason it happens to be.
They think all of the comments about immigrants from Trump, AfD, etc. aren't directed at them and they are somehow different and if the AfD get into power in Germany then they will only want to send the 'other' immigrants back and not them.
There is a Scottish guy I know here in Cologne who is right wing and blatantly racist at times and is now retired. He is married to a German woman and has lived here for 20+ years and he truly believes that all of the AfD comments about foreigners don't apply to him and they are only referring to people who have come over from Syria and Afghanistan.
Some of us may remember a user from the old TT (RenegadeFurther I think his name was) who was also quite pro-AfD and, at some point, it emerged that he was non-white. He presumably thought the same thing i.e. all of the racist comments from the AfD and their supporters didn't apply to him because he was from the UK and not Syria/Afghanistan.
I think this is the same in a lot of countries. In the company I work for there are 6 or 7 Indian people that work in the UK office who came over from India on a visa and all of them voted for Brexit.
I tend to think, that a vote for the Afd, was or is a bit like a vote for Brexit.
In that a lot of people voted Brexit, in the UK, because they wanted a change, because things were not going so well for the general economy in the years before the Brexit vote. This meant that a lot of UK people were worse off, unemployed and worse off if you could get a job, because pay levels were not keeping up. So now we are post Brexit, would you say the UK is better off, I think not.
Also, if you could not get a job and other immigrants could, you would blame them.
Now, the Germany economy has not been doing well for at least 3 years, everybody is taking about higher taxes, or bigger borrowing or reduced services from the government, car firms are cutting back on staff, parts of BASF are moving abroad because they can get cheap energy there. Lots of small firms are cutting back.
I think a lot of people are voting Afd, because things do not look so good in Germany any more, and people who promise a radical change to make things better are thought about. But I do not think the Afd, will make things better.
Of course, immigrants driving cars into people do not help positive feeling to immigrants either.
I think it is extremely un likely that the Afd with its partners will ever get to 50 % vote share. Which is required to form a Government in Germany
I did not check but I do not think it has every happened before, under the current parliament rules, not under the old rules.
As long as the other main parties stick to the fire wall, I cannot see them ever getting power.
However if they did get in, they could of course limit immigrants, send immigrants back, leave the EURO and leave the EU
Even if they do get power, there have to rule in line with the constitution of Germany, means if they want to do really nasty stuff, the Germany court can over rule them. To change the constitution the Afd would need over 75 % of parliament to support them., this is so un likely that I cannot see it happening. Guess I could be wrong.
The German constitution, was put in place after 1945, in a way that nutters, will find it very hard to get in to power.
Its not like the UK, where its just the biggest minority get in to power, there the far right would have a better chance of getting into power.
