My article will be focused around how Germany’s AfD party is recruiting young white men. The article will start from the beginnings of the AfD party, their rise to power, political factors that influence demographic support, and finally the youth movement. A majority of the information for the context of this article has come from various interviews prior to the Berlin trip. Most importantly, I will include interviews from AfD politicians and those who have seen this rise affect their lives. The people I met in Berlin will become characters in my story, including the young AfD social media activist who I wrote my profile about. Additionally, I hope to talk more with a Freie student about her experiences with the AfD party and how it is affecting her younger brother who has been leaning more and more to the right. Since he has not yet agreed to an interview, I can’t say for sure this will be my main story line.
Because I haven’t finalized a main character for this story, I have been brainstorming more ideas to find the through line. One of my interviewees mentioned that she was an intern at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which focuses on extremism in social media. In addition to this organization, I will be including some evidence from videos posted by social media influencers to serve as direct evidence. Another method for contacting sources will be to directly message people who liked or commented on these types of post.
I also would be interested in comparing the movement in Germany to the rightward shift more broadly across Europe and in the US. The main AfD politician who I will be including in the story has posted on his Instagram a selfie wearing a MAGA hat. Another aspect that I also want to include, but am not yet sure where it should go, is opinion that many hold that the democrats did not do a good job in their messaging in the past few decades, and are partially at fault for this movement.
