Editor's note: Paul Hockenos is a Berlin-based writer specializing in renewable energy in Europe. He is the author of five books on European issues, most recently “Berlin Calling: A Story of Anarchy, Music, the Wall and the Birth of a New Berlin.” Opinions expressed in this article are Hockenos' own. Read more CNN Opinion.
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Five years ago, when the European Union last voted, teenagers across the continent took to the streets en masse to demonstrate for serious climate protection policies, protesting that they had no say in decisions that would define their lives for years to come. “If you keep the climate cool, we'll go to school,” they chanted with gusto, justifying their bold decision to skip class in protest.
Hayan Al Yusof
Paul Hockenos
Surveys have shown that in democracies on both sides of the Atlantic, young people (usually between the ages of 18 and 24) tend to vote for reform-minded, center-left parties rather than right-wing parties. That's why European conservatives have long opposed giving 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote, even though those in their later teens are legally able to work, drive, and pay federal income tax.
And indeed, in the 2019 European Parliament elections, the youngest voters turned out in droves to express their concerns about global warming in what observers called a “green wave”: A third of young Germans voted for the Green Party.
Five years have passed and things have changed dramatically.
The European Parliament elections, which ended on Sunday, were the first in which 16-year-olds in Germany were eligible to vote since the voting age was lowered from 18.
And in Austria, Belgium, Malta and Greece, 16- and 17-year-olds were given the right to vote. These minors finally had a say in issues that will affect them for years, if not decades, to come.
How shocking it was then, and just days after the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings, that so many German newbies disproportionately voted for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Paul Hockenos
How shocking it was then, and just days after the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings, that so many German newbies voted disproportionately for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). In this election, 16% of 16-24 year-olds voted for the AfD, an 11-point increase from five years ago. (Of course, the vast majority of teenagers don't vote for the far right, but the increase in turnout is still worrying.)
The AfD, whose members repeat banned Nazi slogans and spout barely veiled racism and Islamophobia, won roughly the same number of young people's votes as the victorious CDU/CSU coalition and far more than the Greens.
Exit polls showed that immigration swayed many voters (of all ages) to the right: A whopping 95% of AfD supporters in Germany said Germany should limit the influx of foreigners and refugees, and about the same number said they didn't mind the AfD being a far-right party as long as it addressed its top issues.
This latter claim is all the more disturbing because the AfD has made no secret of its extremist credentials: On May 20, just before the election, the party's leading candidate, Maximilian Kurler, announced that members of the Nazis' notorious paramilitary organization, the SS, were not necessarily criminals. (Hitler's elite military unit was essential to carrying out the Holocaust, which killed six million Jews, and to the brutal suppression of domestic opposition to the dictatorship.)
The AfD responded by removing Klar from the campaign but keeping him at the top of its list of candidates. Amid other scandals surrounding him, the party decided on Monday to remove him from its list of new EU lawmakers.
The comments were so offensive, and the AfD's politics in general are far more extreme than those of Europe's far-right parties, that the European Parliament's Identity and Democracy Group, a coalition of populist right-wing parties that includes Marine Le Pen's Rally for France, expelled the AfD from the party.
Adam Berry/Getty Images/File
On March 1, 2019, high school students in Hamburg, Germany held a demonstration against global warming.
This year, the AfD's scandals seem to grow longer by the week. The party has come under German intelligence watch as a threat to democracy, and the agency may recommend that it be banned from politics altogether. And a recent German investigation found that 28 AfD members active in the German parliament had been convicted of violence-related offences, including verbal abuse and incitement to hatred.
It is certainly not a party that can appeal to the next generation of German voters.
But this sudden change in attitude among young Germans did not come suddenly. German surveys show a general dissatisfaction with the economic and political situation after the pandemic. “The coronavirus pandemic has [young people] “Citizens are increasingly anxious about their ability to cope with the future,” conclude the authors of “Germany's Youth in 2024.” The biggest problems concern personal finances, professional opportunities, the health sector, housing and social recognition.
The AfD does not directly address any of these issues, instead claiming that ending immigration and rolling back EU control is a panacea for all problems.
And this is not unique to Germany: In recent elections in Portugal, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and France, large numbers of young voters supported extreme nationalist or eurosceptic parties.
03:02 – Source: CNN
Thousands protest against far-right protests in France after EU elections
Indeed, experts say the pandemic and social media, particularly TikTok, a medium that the far-right has used to its advantage, have played a key role in this.
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These changes in attitudes among young people in Europe, especially Germans who have been exposed to the crimes of the Nazi dictatorship in their history classes, are deeply worrying. But it is too early to conclude that there has been a long-term shift in, as the BBC puts it, “the image of the far-right voter as typically white, male, non-university educated and above all elderly.”
Young people are especially impulsive and emotional and are on a steep learning curve, and their frustrations with a slow economic recovery, a pandemic that has unfairly punished them (for no reason), and a confluence of other crises around the world are understandable.
But since the far-right doesn't have the answers to these problems (and, oddly enough, I've heard far-right voters say they are aware of the problems), they must vent their indignation constructively. This right-wing rebellion is a tantrum that prevents democracy from addressing its own shortcomings.
A protest vote for a dangerous party could have serious consequences, including a future even more ominous than the one young people so fear.
