Summary
Support for Germany’s far-right AfD is surging among young men, driven by concerns over immigration, conservative values, and distrust of mainstream politics.
A Pew study found 26% of German men view AfD positively, compared to 11% of women.
Social media, particularly TikTok, has helped spread its message. Some young supporters reject accusations of extremism, while others openly embrace far-right views.
Analysts warn that if mainstream parties ease their opposition to the AfD, it could become Germany’s dominant right-wing party.
If men can’t teach men how to be men, I think men are out of luck.
Not having to fight an uphill battle against a small, but vocal minority of women pushing young men into the false comfort of adversarial relations (and its gurus) would help a lot. Don’t actively do damage, is all I’m asking from the female side here. Men didn’t invent, say, the ick trend. I can roll my eyes at it, thirty years younger me didn’t have that luxury, and getting young boys to ignore it is more involved than just saying “they’re stupid, self-absorbed and immature”. Shit can do psychological damage, self-image issues, that need healing. The gist is men by and large aren’t built for psychological warfare and lots of women have no idea what kind of strays they’re firing.
I see. It’s women’s fault that the men who control the media can’t teach other men how to be men.
Finally, the conspiracy all comes together.
Men control women doing tiktoks? Even if a shady cabal of men sits at tiktok HQ algorithmically pushing ick content (why?), it needs women to produce it in the first place.
Ah, I see. “Women doing tiktoks” control the men who control virtually all of the media which is why they can’t teach other men how to be men.
It all makes sense when you put it that way.
It’s you who’s talking about “all media”. I’m talking about one specific example “ick tiktoks”, stuff I have to deal with in martial arts classes, because freshly-minted teens get confused as fuck about it.
Who are these men that are flooding tiktok with ick content? Making my job harder?
The person I was talking to before you butted in. Literally.
You apparently wished to change the subject without announcing you were doing so.
I wouldn’t say it’s a shift. Only a subset of media is relevant when it comes to boys. I didn’t pull those ick tiktoks out of my hat as a “gotcha” example, this is the type of problematic media that I have to deal with because that’s what my students are exposed to. They’re not watching linear TV so that doesn’t matter, they’re not reading newspapers so those don’t matter, the vast majority of the established news media sphere doesn’t matter and Hollywood is well-balanced by anime, not many issues there. It’s fiction in the first place which gets perceived differently, the veracity of tiktok trends can be much harder to asses for teens. Rambo is badass because it’s an action flick, they understand that it’s a fantasy. Any martial arts movie? The same, and in a martial arts class that’s a teaching moment right there, how “making it look cool” and “making it effective” are two completely different things. That ick stuff? They take it at face value, on a deep level.
I’m pretty sure they’re not watching feminists on TikTok either. Maybe the weird boys who go to your martial arts classes do. The rest of them watch whoever they’ve moved on to since Andrew Tate.