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I was looking at moving to Germany soon, can anyone there tell me if it is just headed towards US-levels of fascism? I feel like a lot of the news articles I read say as much, but I don't unfortunately know if the sources are the equivalent of FOX News or what.
You already got good answers but I'm going to add this:
English language news are (still) obsessed with Germany's past and every Nazi thing out of Germany will get amplified 10x more than, say, out of France or Sweden.
I don't think that will happen. We are watchful of everything working towards that direction.
And the racism is not nearly as open as in the US even in areas where the AfD is strong.
Belgian here. Can you guys watch harder please thanks
Will try
Didn't AFD became the second biggest in the last elections? And a less far right, more center right party CDU became first, but its cutting it pretty close... What a wonderful world we live in
It‘s more that CDU became more „center right“ by German standards rather than them suddenly getting many votes. Merkel used to be chairwomen of the party when she was chancellor and most Americans would consider her left leaning. The party was a lot more popular back then too so becoming more right wing likely lost them a lot of votes.
The AfD is also confirmed right wing extremist by official watchdog agencies meaning it‘s eligible to get banned. So far the current coalition has not made any move to vote for a ban, claiming they want to defeat them politically. But that did not work out once in the last 10 years and will 100% fail. I expect either the CDU to completely implode soon or a ban of the AfD. Although it‘s questionable how effective a ban will be because some of their members will definitely start a new far right party immediately.
True, its also America meddling in Europe with their far right allies to overthrow European government and replace them with far right leaders, still it baffles me how many people are so racist. Not just in Germany this is also happening in The Netherlands. Fucking shameful... I try to win people over but they keep being racists, its kind of hard to bring them to have empathy for others, just makes me hopeless for this world and idk if I wanna live in it tbh my moral compass in the way
Isn't rebranding also illegal? They can't just make notAfD-2.
Though for my money, every person associated with the party should be banned from politics. Some should go to jail for undermining democracy and the state at the behest of Russia.
"biggest party" also doesn't imply what it might in a US context. It's still a minority of the country. The overwhelming majority of the country is anti-AfD
Thank you for the response, genuinely appreciated!
Honestly, as a foreigner I have a different view. Politics are incredibly right wing, there’s basically just Die Linke which is center left everything else is at least center right.
The current government can be considered right wing extremist in that they have one of the toughest anti-immigration stances in Europe and they actively ignore court orders on stopping border controls or the arrest warrant against Netanyahu, and they are having corruption scandals en masse.
Islamophobia is widely accepted, and there is a significant part of rural Germany where AFD (the neo-Nazis) are the strongest party. And if not then, it’s often CDU with similar levels of racism, etc. just not openly neo-Nazi. There’s a growing issue with neo-Nazi teenagers planning terror attacks, disrupting pride protests and just generally attacking and intimidating people of color.
The government doesn’t address this issue enough and rather tries to blame immigrants for homophobia or antisemitism. Anti-genocide protests are being framed as antisemitic by politicians and media and the Gaza genocide is being framed as a humanitarian catastrophe and they generally feel that Gazans had it coming. Police violence happens literally at almost every protest and rhe police had impunity when beating up and sending unarmed protesters, including kids to the hospital or to jail. Germans are staunch Zionists with their Staatsräson and even after almost 2 years are nowhere near coming around.
Germans will generally deny most if not all of this and say that things are fine (see the downvotes), but they really aren’t. Currently, Germany is still a fine place to live in tbh, that is if you live in big cities and especially not in eastern Germany, but the direction the county is going is very wrong and people are afraid that there might a government coalition including AFD in the next 4-8 years
I can second this.
I was at the queer march yesterday in Berlin. And the amount of attacks and intimidation the police did to the march was unbelievable. Whereas the march was one of the most peaceful demonstrations I have ever seen. All the people marginalised, gay, trans, queer, muslim, jew, arab, black, asian, standing in solidarity against discrimination and crimes against humanity.
The police has so much power in Germany that it feels like a fascist police state. Even more scary is that when I look at any kind of media, I see these demonstrations demonised. IE the only piece of news from this demo yesterday is that someone throwing a glass bottle to a police. Like wtf police stopped, beat and arrested the demonstrators tens of times yet this is the news?
I was there too! Witnessed police brutality although that’s sadly not surprising or shocking anymore but rather expected. Once I was filming and suddenly there was a bunch of cops blocking my way and kinda locking me in when I actually wanted to go out of the crowd. It was a very intimidating moment, people very mostly very peaceful but the cops made me feel really unsafe.
Absolutely agree. I am a civil servant and my colleagues biggest fear is islam and foreigners.
Meanwhile i do not see our government take action against social injustice, the biggest driving force behind the growing discontent. Instead they blow into the same horn, blaming foreigners and the poor for our problems, the two groups least responsible.
It is really depressing as, just like u said, germany is still a good place to live right now but next elections scare me to death
Germany is not heading toward a Trump style regime. The big Conservative Party CDU has not forming a coalition with the AfD as a rule. The other parties will also do everything to keep AfD from power. Of course that doesn’t mean this can’t change. The current political climate is still favorable to the AfD and they are able to consolidate and expand their operations and supporters.
The AfD is big and has success in elections both local and federal. However there are internal factions, that don’t fully agree. A national-libertarian-conservative wing faces a völkisch neo-fascist wing. The AfD has not found their great charismatic leader like Trump yet. It could fracture as well.
The next federal elections are in four years. The current government has to be able to present some major achievements in the areas of cost of living, migration, and especially the economy. An end to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza would also help.
Even if the AfD becomes the biggest party in the next federal elections, a government of national unity or a minority government is more likely.
Institutions and laws in Germany are designed to prevent a fascist takeover. Of course this is no guarantee.
There’s also an ongoing attempt at making the AfD an illegal organization opposed to the state. A success there would mean it would have to disband and couldn’t participate in elections.
The political climate in Germany is more polarized than it used to be, but it’s not at US levels.
I’m stuck here in the US like you, but I want to point out that you might not get a meaningfully useful answer to your question here. The majority of posters here are still actively denying that the civil war has already started because that only happens in poor countries.
Germany, and especially Berlin, has been a Zionist police state for over a year, in addition to all the racism and Islamophobia. Fascism is absolutely making a comeback in Germany. See: https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/germany and https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/europe-and-central-asia/western-central-and-south-eastern-europe/germany/report-germany/