Irony is that the after naturalisation, the immigrant actually votes for the Right parities. That happened in US as well as in Germany

Perhaps, but at least there is material and financial support to Ukraine. I doubt AfD would continue it, or provide it for other EU member states if attacked.

> would send their soldiers to die

transforming a cold war into an full war.

> So we get to work for the state about half the time (including VAT etc)

Dreadful framing. You work for the benefit of the entirety of Germany including yourself half the time.

Instead of viewing it as money you've lost, do this: look at the fractions of what the German (federal, municipal, etc) government spends its budget on, then apply these to what you pay yearly in taxes. Then compare that to the other things you spend money on privately and what value you directly or indirectly get out of what you 'worked for for the state'.

Soon the Germany would be stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to fiscal responsibility. They cannot depreciate the currency because Euro is controlled by Brussels and to pay the interest on debt, they would have to borrow even more and the vicious cycle would continue till they are back in Weimar Republic 2.0

> that makes the far-right parties grow stronger

That issue is just one of many that they use and abuse to gain popularity. They have also spread lies about vaccines. They promote antisemitism, xenophobia, hate against the LGBTI people, historical revisionism (e.g. they say nice things about the Nazis), etc. They are even fighting against the wind turbines (or, as Donald Trump calls them, the "wind mills"). You cannot satisfy their demands by "fixing" one issue. Because they will always find another. The more absurd one, the better, it seems. I think that the reason is that those absurd causes are supported by people who are easy to manipulate. They know it. And they abuse it.

> Why wait for these parties to use this issue to fuel their growth?

No one wants to wait. But at the same time, I have not yet seen a successful recipe on how to root out their populist practices and render them ineffective against the general population at large. Because, unfortunately, there is still a considerable number of people who are falling for it. And it seems to me that no politician or party so far has been able to figure out a reliable way to protect those who are most vulnerable from being manipulated this way.

The CDU has been trying to adopt more AfD positions and talking points, in the hopes of getting their votes. Meanwhile this keeps only strengthening the AfD, but the CDU would rather see the fascists in power than govern with anyone left of center.

> The overall cost is not low. Some illegal immigrants get benefits.

> But those costs are not seen by the businesses that push illegal immigration.

Do you have a source about the cost? As of 2023, noncitizen immigrants generally and illegal immigrants specifically were a net positive to fiscal burden [1]:

> Illegal noncitizens were only somewhat less fiscally positive per capita than noncitizens generally, and they likely reduced the deficit by at least $1.7 trillion from 1994 to 2023. Illegal immigrants of all educational attainments are also likely to have paid more in taxes than they received in government benefits. Although we adopt simple assumptions, it is difficult to arrive at a conclusion significantly different from the one below. Even if illegal immigrants used benefits at the exact same rate as all noncitizens, they would still be, on average, fiscally beneficial to the United States—both by reducing the debt in real terms and by lowering debt-to-GDP.

> Almost all illegal immigrants will use the healthcare system eventually.

If by almost all you mean that most illegal immigrants get pathways to permanent residence/citizenship (unclear to me whether that's true), it's not very relevant unless you propose that after becoming legal residents illegal immigrants burden the economy/budget more than always-legal residents do. Otherwise, I would wonder whether the national birth rate issue [2] is as urgent as I've heard.

[1] https://www.cato.org/white-paper/immigrants-recent-effects-g...

[2] https://phys.org/news/2026-06-birth-declining-world.html

You really should have read the rest of that extremely short comment.

Giving them an opportunity to speak on immigration by handling it so badly.

If I don't put out a fire, you can come along and suggest pouring kerosene on it, and if I handle shit badly enough, people might say hey, why not. But if I put the fire out while you're still a toddler, what can you do? Suggest to start a fire and pour kerosene on it?

> to me this sounds exactly like the type of fascist rhetoric everyone warns about

Well going by what you just did, I would have to guess you would say this about just about anything except fascist rhetoric. To try to twist something to harmless and banally true as the above into some sinister fascist ideology, while shrugging off people calling the Holocaust a "Fliegenschiss", who plan to abolish education about that time, does have a Gschmäckle.

You have completely misread what he is saying. See Denmark - mainstream parties started to be harder on immigration and all the right wing parties in Denmark essentially evaporated.

Pretty much. It's not a fun time being a brown person in Chemnitz.

I'm pretty convinced at this point there's almost nothing we can do about it.

> Let's be real: this "issue" is a strawman. It doesn't really exist, especially in that part of Germany. Just like pretty much everywhere else, the German anti-immigrant far right is strongest in the areas with the fewest immigrants

This is not a strawman. Even if you believe that the AFD is not correct in its diagnosis of the problems, why are you saying something that is a complete lie: https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/54441/germany-net-migra...

According to this organization which sits on the complete on opposite spectrum of the right/far-right, they write that 2.7M people immigrants moved to Germany in 2022 with a net inflow of 1.5M in a single year.

According to the same organization, today, immigrants make-up at least 20% of the German population and that's from an article from 2024 so that number is probably low. So if we extrapolate roughly 1 in 4 people living in Germany are not German.

That is exactly why the AFD is rising, people just bury their heads in the sand and pretend that there is no problem at all.

But I guess its easier to think that 44% of the inhabitants of Saxony-Anhalt are secretly Nazies than admitting that something must change. Lets continue doing that, its been working so well so far!

Right, I agree. But what makes people vote for this kind of stuff? It's not like 44% of saxon-anhalt just wakes up overnight and decides "Hey, you know what...". I think it must grow over years of their feelings/opinions being ignored.

My only point was that, perhaps, we should think about these causes and why the core political parties can't solve them; otherwise it's only going to get worse -- hell at this rate they'll actually get enough people onboard to achieve their goals within a few cycles.

You're talking about the party. You're not saying anything wrong, but parent was talking about the voters.

It is true that the issues of people who vote far-right are ridiculed, and they themselves are demonised, which the parent holds, and I agree, is unproductive.

Far-right voters are largely the losers of globalisation/economic growth trying whatever they can to improve their situation: the phenomenon of many of these voters alternating between far-right and far-left from one election to the other is one of many indicators of what their real goal is, ie improving their situation.

Re migration: it does have negative effects on the economically marginalised, which the readership of HN and the talking heads in mainstream media are largely not. Among these are increasing housing costs, downward pressure on salaries, rapid and alienating shifts in cultural (and I mean cultural, not racial) makeup of cities and neighbourhoods: none of this should be controversial.

The establishment parties (so right and "left" like SPD, Labour, PS) have financial incentives to increase migration, which they do (see the Boris wave in the UK).

While migration is not an inherent evil at all, the way it's done by these parties does lead to negative effects, which adds one reason among many to vote for the far-right. So the short-term solution (curbing migration) is the simple and popular answer. The long-term solution (curbing capitalism) is harder and unpopular, so radical left parties unfortunately get fewer votes (except in France, where there's a real chance of the LFI showing a better path).

there's clearly been a problem with migrants, why did no party address these issues?

if you could make them powerless by just addressing the issue, why have no parties done that? why hand power to the AfD?

Whats your solution to the immigration problem in Germany?

I have a feeling that the majority of AFD voters simply want some kind of change and action on what they are seeing happen in Germany. I'm definitely not one of them, (and being an auslander myself I have skin in this game) -- this is a failure of the other parties more than it's a victory for AFD. But then again, that's all it takes really.

What is the "far-right" far from?

In normal English, it would be from the average (median) voter. A party is "far-right" (or "far-left") if it is substantially to the right (left) of the average voter.

Assume that people vote for the person/party closest to their own view on an issue. 44% of voters choose the far-right candidate, meaning 44% of voters are closer to the far-right candidate than any other option.

How can this happen? Several ways, but only one is realistic: the other candidates are even farther away (to the left or right) from the position of the median voter. 40%+ of voters are themselves "far-right".

> The Nazi party got 37% of votes nationwide (not just in one state).

The Nazi party was not that far to the right of the median German voter at the time.

The far-left is using scary words ("Nazi", "Far-right", etc.) to tar a group they dislike (see what I did there?) They are counting on the fact that most voters can be influenced by group-think and name-calling. They are probably correct. But this is Hacker News, and the people here ought to be smart enough to see this for the stupid political smear that it obviously is. If you don't like a party, make the case that their policy is wrong. If vague analogy to the Nazis is the best argument you have, then you have no argument at all.

This is exactly the arrogant narrative that pushes more people to vote for AfD. It’s the people’s right to vote for any party they want and that’s part of the democratic process.

Labelling or bullying people because they have exercised their right and calling them Nazis is not gonna make them change their mind at all.

After all who are you or anyone else to say that what other person has voted is right or wrong. You can have your opinion, but you cannot judge them

That comparison is depressingly applicable. The National Socialists gained power in a period when both the present and future looked very bleak to a large fraction of German voters, and a whole succession governments formed by political mainstream figures had demonstrated that they couldn't do squat to really fix things - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic#Renewed_crisis...

If https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_II had not done such a comprehensive job of discrediting hereditary nobility, it might be healthier if German voters had the option to replace their elected government with a ruling Kaiser for 4 or 5 years. Ideally, that would lessen the appeal of more-extreme political parties. And the threat of indefinite irrelevance (the Kaiser could be reelected) might even motivate the politicians to occasional competence.

Is the AfD a party in favor of liberal democracy? Enlighten us about where you'd palce their ideas in the political spectrum.

Exactly but woke communism is the mass ideology of the dumb people right now so everyone that hates woke shit is a nazi to those clowns.