Almost one in three Germans is extremely hostile to foreigners | News News

Berlin – Xenophobic attitudes are increasingly accepted by society in Germany. According to a study from the University of Leipzig, nearly a third of the citizens of this country now represent such positions.

In the East, nearly one in two (47.1%) agrees with claims such as "Aliens use the welfare state". A clearly right – wing worldview currently counts six percent of Germans. This value is higher than the surveys of the last four years. However, it remains well below the 9.7% share obtained during the first survey in 2002.

While anti-Semitic attitudes have slightly decreased compared to 2016, the devaluation of Muslims, Sinti and Roma in society has mainly been confirmed, according to the authors of the representative study "Escape from authoritarianism" presented Wednesday in Berlin.

According to these statements, more than half of the country's population (55%) subscribe to the statement "Thanks to the many Muslims here, I sometimes feel foreign in my own country". When researchers asked this question two years earlier, the approval rate was 50%. In 2014, it was 43%.

Participants in the study were also asked about their electoral preferences. It turned out that 55% of people who said they would vote for AFD if Sunday's federal election would be a federal election, expressed its xenophobia. Of those who would vote for the CDU, the CSU and the SPD, 22% were anti-foreigners. For FDP voters, the researchers found a value of 18%. Proponents of the Left Party (15%) and the Greens (11%) were significantly less numerous.

Brähler said that overall, the fewer foreigners living in a region, the more feared they would be "too fearful" in the region. The only exception is Bavaria, where relatively many people from immigration live and where such fears are present.

The director of the study, Oliver Decker, and Elmar Brähler, director of the study, also noted other strengths between AfD voters and supporters of other parties represented in the Bundestag. According to the study, 13.1% of respondents who called the AfD "electoral preference" argued for a right-wing authoritarian dictatorship. By comparison: 2.3% of the voters of the parties of the Union expressed this opinion, 4.3% among supporters of the FDP. For members of the left-wing party, the Greens and the SPD, this proportion was less than 2%.

As supporters of an "authoritarian right dictatorship" in the sense of the study, we mean those who declare statements such as "in the national interest, certain circumstances, the best form of government "or" What Germany needs now, it is a single party that perfectly embodies the national community ".

The researchers found great differences between East and West when they asked for attitudes that could be summed up as "social Darwinism". For example, nine per cent of West Germans agree with the statement: "Life is precious and unworthy". In the area of ​​the former GDR, 14.5% of respondents were of this opinion.

After all, the study offers some very good news from the authors' point of view: in the East, the population's satisfaction with the functioning of democracy went from 27.3% in 2006 to 46.9 % in the meantime.

Copyright © Mindener Tageblatt 2018
Copyright © dpa – German Press Agency 2018

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