Key points
- Far right expands international network
- AfD party has made swift inroads in Germany
- Women and minority groups are worried
- Young people are falling to right-wing propaganda
ISLAMABAD: Germany is at the crossroads of history. Radical right-wing movement AfD party has made swift inroads, thanks to a plethora of factors ranging from sluggish economy and high inflation to mass exoduses sparked by conflicts around the world.
Right-wing movements around the globe are united by nationalism, populism and the fight against immigration, according to experts.
Representatives of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party were among the guests at US President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025. They were there alongside Argentina’s President Javier Milei, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Nigel Farage from the UK, according to story published in DW.
One day before, Trump’s former chief ideologue Steve Bannon, the son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, an AfD lawmaker and numerous influencers held an informal meeting in Washington to exchange ideas.
One right-wing influencer from Germany posted a video from the sidelines, boasting that he had just received an invitation from El Salvador’s ambassador.
United against whom?
“The key political issues that unite these far-right networks include opposition to migration, nationalism, traditional family values, and anti-globalisation,” sociology professor Katrine Fangen from the University of Oslo in Norway told DW. Fangen is a renowned expert on the transnational network of the radical right.
“These networks are not only fighting for more political influence but also for cultural hegemony. Their ultimate goal is to reshape the global ideological landscape in favor of nationalism, social conservatism, and opposition to liberal democracy,” she explained.
The key political issues that unite these far-right networks include opposition to migration, nationalism, traditional family values, and anti-globalisation.” – sociology professor Katrine Fangen
And the radical right is quickly learning from each other. Strategies and successes in one country are soon adopted by other movements, according to political scientist Thomas Greven from Berlin’s Free University.
He considers the extent of the radical right’s networking to be historically unprecedented.
In his book ‘The International Network of the Radical Right’ he describes the strategy: “For example, Bannon’s strategy of ‘flooding the zone with shit’ is very successful internationally: that means constantly overwhelming the political opponent with lies, new ideas and hostility,” Greven explained in an interview with DW.
“This communication strategy is now used everywhere by actors on the radical right,” he said.
Why Germans turning to the far right?
Pew research in 2024 found that 26 per cent of German men had positive views of the AfD compared to 11 per cent 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 per cent, up by 11 points from 2019, according to BCC.
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.
