(BBC News) “What my parents taught me is that they used to live in peace and calm, without having to have any fear in their own country,” says 19-year-old Nick. “I would like to live in a country where I don’t have to be afraid.”
I meet him in a small bar on a street corner in the ex-mining town of Freiberg, Saxony – where he is playing darts.
It’s a cold, foggy night in February with just over two weeks to go until Germany’s national election.
Nick and his friend Dominic, 30, are backers or sympathetic to Alternative für Deutschland – a party that has been consistently polling second in Germany for more than a year-and-a-half, as the political right here and elsewhere in Europe attracts an increasing number of young people, particularly men, into its orbit.
One particular reason why Nick – and many other young German men – say they are afraid is the number of attacks in Germany involving suspects who were asylum seekers – most recently, the fatal stabbing of a toddler and a man in a park in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg. Immigration is now Nick and Dominic’s main concern, although they don’t oppose it in all forms.
“The people who integrate, who learn, who study here, do their work – I have no problems with them,” says Dominic, though he is critical of anyone he sees as taking advantage of the asylum system.
“But these days such statements are seen as hostile,” says Dominic. “You are called a Nazi because of Germany’s past.”
While not against all immigration, Nick and Dominic see it as their main concern, especially after a series of attacks in Germany allegedly involving asylum seekers.
The AfD – which has long been accused of anti-migrant rhetoric – is celebrating endorsements from tech billionaire Elon Musk, who owns the social media site X. He has hosted a live discussion with party leader Alice Weidel on the platform and dialled into a party rally.
Now, as Germany waits to see just how well the “far right” does in the upcoming election, the question is why so many young men in particular are being drawn to the right and what the consequences could be for a country that is deeply conscious of its Nazi past.
Young men swinging to the right
Pew research in 2024 found that 26% of German men had positive views of the AfD compared to 11% of women, and the share of men holding this opinion has risen 10 points since 2022.
In the elections for the European Parliament in 2024, according to German exit polls, the number of under-24-year-olds, both male and female, who voted for the AfD in Germany rose to 16%, up by 11 points from 2019.
This comes at a time of rising general anxiety among young people, according to a recent study by the German Institute for Generational Research.
In a sample size of 1,000 Germans aged 16 to 25, anxiety levels were the highest amongst respondents who class themselves as “far right” while they were the lowest amongst people who put themselves in the middle of the political spectrum.
Women were more likely to be concerned for their rights and those of minority groups while men were found to be more worried about conservative values that are less based around rights.
Dr Rüdiger Maas, from the German think-tank Institute for Generational Research, says parties on the left often focus on themes such as feminism, equality and women’s rights.
“Overall, men don’t see themselves in these themes,” he tells us. “That is why they have a tendency to vote further right.”
Hard, populist right parties have done well recently in countries such as France, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Italy.
“Sixty per cent of young men under 30 would consider voting for the far right in EU countries, and this is much higher than the share among women,” says Prof Abou-Chadi in analysis drawn from a subset of the 2024 European Election Study.
Message spreaders
As well as gender, migration and economic issues, social media is playing a part. Platforms such as TikTok allow political groups to bypass mainstream, traditional media.
It’s clear that AfD “dominates” TikTok when compared to other German parties, says Mauritius Dorn from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). It has 539,000 followers on its parliamentary account, compared to 158,000 for the SPD who currently have the most seats in the German parliament.
And it isn’t just official accounts but a “considerable number of unofficial fan accounts also help to disseminate the party’s content,” says Dorn.
Through setting up 10 “persona-based” accounts with different user profiles, they found, “those users who are more on the right-wing spectrum… see a lot of AfD content, whereas users from the leftist spectrum see a more diverse set of political content.”
TikTok has said it does not “differentiate” between the right, left or centre of politics and works to stay at the “forefront” of tackling misinformation.
Dorn observes that other parties recognised sites such as TikTok “too late”, which means they are playing catch-up in establishing a strong footprint on the platform.
We met one AfD influencer, Celina Brychcy – a 25-year-old TikTokker who has more than 167,000 followers, 53% of whom are male, with 76% aged 18 to 35.
She mainly shares dance, trend and lifestyle videos, but also pro-AfD content. Brychcy says she does not make money from promoting the AfD but does it because she believes in the cause and wants to “get a message across.”
Her political ideals include wanting the return of military service, more support for mothers who want or need to stay at home, and stricter border controls.
When I press her about whether her views amount to a rejection of multiculturalism, she replied no, but believes people should “integrate.”
“There are certain people who just don’t fit in with us Germans,” she added but repeatedly insisted she is not racist and does not have “anything against foreigners.”
