In eastern Germany, youths embrace nationalism, extremism
In eastern Germany, youths embrace nationalism, extremism
www.dw.com
In eastern Germany, youths embrace nationalism, extremism – DW – 06/30/2025
17 comments
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They should cancel their citizenship and send them to russia.
It would be a good fit.
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No, they'd just end up in Lugansk, killing Ukrainians. Like all the other foreign nationals who migrated to Russia out of some dumbass belief Russia was a "conservative moral bastion" only to get thrown in the army like cattle
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And the region is feeling it. Tourism plummeted, people don't want to move or even be there, and of course also not work there. Combine that with the far-right playing victim and they're almost a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point
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Wonder if the root causes are the same as in America.
I get where these youth are coming from. Consider how easy today's young men are to manipulate.
They see a world with more and more people, and more and more of them are foreign. They know their fathers and grandfathers had it easier. Who's to blame?!
Seems youth all over the first world are more and more isolated, unhappy and according to what I read on lemmy, totally broken in IRL social interactions. Blame COVID, blame social media, blame the internet in general, whatever, sure seems something is making our youth anxious and fearful.
I could go on and on, but watch American History X for a primer on how to exploit fearful young people who feel they have nothing to lose. This is England has got some solid insights as well.
Any Germans want to comment on that? Am I way off base?
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Hi, German here (even born in Dessau, the city mentioned in the article).
Personally I doubt that the youth thinks their parents/grandparents had it easier. I mean my parents grew up in Eastern Germany and while some things were better a lot of other things were way worse. My grandparents are the generation which rebuild a destroyed nation.
One of the key problems in Eastern Germany is they got screwed over and over again (e.g. by the red army, then by the sovjiet regime and then by the German reunification). Each time they had to rebuild with less ressources than before. That means like 90% of industry in Eastern German was destroyed.
So growing up here the goal for many, including me, was to leave. There are not many good jobs there and Western Germany pays better for the same jobs. None of my friends stayed in Dessau. And that is a phenomenon going on since the reunification - Dessaus inhabitants are notably older on average. I still live in Eastern Germany, in a bigger city though - and I work remote for a company in "Western Germany" as it pays roughly 20.000 € more than equal positions locally.
So a lot of the people who stay, stay because they can't leave. And thus social circles shrink and diversity gets erradicated - no LGBTQ* person or person of color will want to stay as there is nothing for them. So now you have a bunch of young pissed people with no voice against them. Perfect breeding ground for Nazi ideology. And then they get older and angrier and get kids themselves and "suddenly" you have a nazi youth.
And the politicians do not help. At. All. This is a problem 75+ years in the making but it still gets ignored. There is no perspective for a lot of small German towns.
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The irony being a lot of Germans stick their head in sand and pretending homophobia and racism isn't baked into German society because, "We're not as bad as America."
I'm a black American who's lived in western Germany from 4ish years and the similarities between the two are GLARING.
Eastern Germany is exactly the same as Southern and Midwestern US. I look at places like Dresden and Dessau the EXACT same way I look at rural Mississippi and Alabama
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Wow! Suspected I was off, hence the question. And here a local shows up to educate me! Much thanks!
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Ah ja, Dessau, the Place where the Police set a POC on Fire in a Prisoncell…
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Dessau has been on my bucket list for a while, because of the Bauhaus site. Though, having read this, maybe that window has closed.
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Tbh I’m some brown dude living in Germany and I think it’s currently still fine even though there’s some Mordor kinda thing waking up all over Germany not just he east, so this might be totally different in a couple years and that’s honestly scary.
If you’re a local living on a day to day basis together with Nazis that’s rough, no matter if you’re brown or LGBTQ or just alternative looking. But as a tourist just visiting the Bauhaus Museum I doubt you’ll have any issues. I’ve been to places like Dresden and while I did see an AFD rally I didn’t have any issues whatsoever otherwise.
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The more asocial societies, fearful of others and overall confused about the human experience, will easily fall for the same half-baked nonsense. 🤷
17 comments
Because it sounds so cool how Germany went full blown Nazi the first time around... 😞
It's not a coincidence this is happening right as the last generation that witnessed the horrors of nazism firsthand has mostly passed away.
But also, like, this shit was always under the surface. Denazification was a joke. We teach our kids in school the basic history, but not the politics to go along with it due to conservative fears. So those kids fail to recognize fascists when they come knocking in a suit and with populist half-truths prepared.