Summary
A survey by the Bertelsmann Foundation found that most young Germans (ages 16-30) feel disillusioned with politics, citing distrust, lack of influence, and insufficient avenues for engagement beyond voting.
Only 8% believe politicians take their concerns seriously, and fewer than 1 in 5 feel they can enact change.
Despite this, 61% still see democracy as the best system.
The findings come as Germany faces potential elections after its coalition collapse, with experts urging politicians to better involve youth on key issues like peace, education, and inflation.
Does anyone know what we can do about this? Is there hope?
Just get young people to vote. That’s the issue. Not enough young people vote so politicians know they don’t have to cater for them. If young people voted en masse then politicians would take them seriously.
I agree that people not voting is an issue. But looking at how young people voted in the last EU election, it’s far from the only one.
Build guillotines, break things. Germans used to do that circa 1849, etc.
Passivity is an explicit goal of modern media
German democracy ends at the ballot box
The fruits of neoliberalism. If the market is the ultimate arbiter, why bother with democracy.
state media
That’s the same issue here in canada. especially here in ontario.
Seems like the world has decided to re-learn the lessons about fascism the hard way.
Our outright fascist party currently stands ar about 19% and our far right conservatives party is at about 32%. That party is also known for talking about literally anything our facist party talks about.
So yeah, we are about to learn what fascism does the hard way. At least currently I am pretty sure that the fascists won’t form a coalition with the conservatives, but I don’t know how long it will stay like this.
Society will have to relearn a lesson like this every so often, because people kind of yearn to offload the mental energy involved in controlling some aspect of their lives to someone else. And while they’ll probably start by offloading or to someone competent and with their best interests at heart, eventually someone who wants to extract wealth from that position will rise in such a space.
And the far right AFD will benefit
Or the Freie Wähler or Bündnis Sara Wagenknecht. There are options for anti immigrant populism now
You even don’t have to vote for those. You can just vote for CDU. They are also vquite anti immigration and it will only get worse in the next years.
Why is the world getting collectively dumber?
Design. Keep the poors divided.
Humanity is still coming out of its infancy. Modern science and medicine are only around 300 years old, human flight around a hundred while homo sapiens are hundreds of thousands of years old. A large number of people still have no homes, food scarcity, poor education to the point of illiteracy and the literate read at a average 5th grade level. The old traditions and norms are still trying to claw back at progress. We only live for a short lifespan that means the species has to maintain knowledge across generations or keep relearning the same lessons over and over again and often hurts itself in confusion. The world isn’t getting dumber, but it’s not finding any grip or purchase when trying to drag itself out of the pit of the natural world.
Corporate encouragement.
Seems like people have already given up on the soap box and are giving up on the ballot box, America has already given up on the jury box and is already reaching for the ammo box.
Damnit Germany was going to be my stepping stone for a number of years when I leave the US, out of the fire into a frying pan maybe…
That honestly wasn’t a good idea from the get-go. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad to be in Germany instead of the US, but there are several reasons I’d be open to leave for years now. It’s been obvious we’ve been running into major future problems nobody does anything about. But then again, once you actually look into it, pretty much every country has gone to shit or never has been anything but.
A small list of problems in Germany: political shift to the far right; reliance on a dying industry; avoiding debt at all costs; no investment in infrastructure or any modernization; the inevitable collapse of our pension system; degrading health care; pretty much missing workers in all fields and still hating on immigrants; a crippling bureaucracy overhead for everything; a society dead-set on both complaining about everything and wanting to change nothing.
Sounds much like the US in many ways. Our media just chooses to focus on culture war bullshit instead.
Oh, we’ve got some shitheads taking every culture war talking point from you guys. On of them tried to import the abortion debate, thinking it would spark outrage despite pretty much everyone over here agreeing with abortion rights - as any sane person would. And this shithead probably gets voted into one of the highest positions of government early next year.
Oh I agree, it’s just that Germany gets me out of the US and overseas easier than anywhere else I’ve looked. So it’d be a stepping stone.
Gifting control of their lives to the older generations. This can’t possibly end badly…
Don’t worry, if we just not vote, everything will magically right itself.
You’re right.
Germany appears to be regressing to the Biedermeier era of apathetic conservatism that followed the crushing of the upheavals of 1848
lol. Good luck with that
