CharonY

Right now, I am not seeing that. There have been multiple scandals and reports on some of the more extreme ideas in the party. They have coined the word "remigration", i.e. deport folks that they do not consider German enough out of the country. There is a significant proportion of folks who would more than welcome ICE-style actions in Germany. Unfortunately what we see is that among youth the idea of the holocaust as something relevant is fading. I think they are most hardest hit by our new media landscape and anything beyond a few weeks barely exists for them, much less events that happened way before their birth. Especially young men are attracted to the AfD (60:40 split). While folks 30-59 are still more likely to vote AFD compared to <30, the latter is a big chunk of it. The oldest age group is the one that is least likely to vote AfD. I.e. I think it is overall worrisome, as I interpret that collective knowledge of history is lost or being revised in real-time and those with memories (direct or indirect) are dying out. In this case, I don't think the young ones will rescue the world, they (or least the men) are putting on the gasoline. Edit: I also read some article on young women voting for the AFD. Apparently there is a right-wing movement to attract these women, often via Instragram and TikTok. These groups are connected throughout Europe and associated with the respective parties (e.g., Vox, Rassemblement national, AfD) and a common narrative there is about the fear of getting raped by immigrants. But generally speaking, those parties are better at using TikTok (after all, creating outrage is part of their party strategy) and this is where young folks are especially vulnerable. I feel that to quite a sizable proportion of youngsters the internet is more real than their own IRL experiences and they are actually easier to manipulate than you would historically expect.

I think framing it through an American lens is too limited. These things are happening at a grand international scale and fuels the rise of populist party almost everywhere. As I mentioned earlier, despite the fact that for many voters immigration is one the highest priorities (regardless of how many immigrants they actually encounter), there is still nearly no discussion regarding cost/benefit analyses. In fact, seeing it as a net detriment is almost always a given. This even continues to happen if lack of immigration actually has a net negative impact or when studies show the opposite. The narrative then is that immigrants elsewhere are magically mooching off. The reason why these discussions are not happening has some unfortunate rationality to it. a) voters are not moved by facts, and even if it impacts them, it moves them very little. There is also phenomenon when core convictions are attacked, they become more entrenched, regardless of facts b) a rational discussion is easily dismissed as propaganda and just fuels their conviction that media are biased, c) rather unfortunately, there is a strong baseline xenophobia in virtually all societies. Ideas of taking the high road, i.e. sticking to one's ideals is rare, doesn't politically pay off. Merkel of all people refused to buckle on the right of asylum, something that is anchored in the German constitution. But perhaps even more shocking, she took a moral position (during the Syrian war), rather than demonize asylum seekers as "fake" which would have been the politically prudent position. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she had to step down. And make no mistakes, while some folks publicly draw a distinction between asylum seekers (legitimate or otherwise) and, say highly qualified immigrants, behind closed doors the latter are not really considered part of society and should, in their mind, be put in a more vulnerable position. Again, I think this is not a MAGA or American thing. The far right has managed to tap into a deep human emotion and we cannot rationalize our way out of it.

Yes and especially our collective memory and attention--- sQUIRRel!

Plus it helps to create the notion of perpetual victimhood. It is all the classics, really.

Interestingly, OpenAI claims that their new model was able to do just that. But quite a few remain skeptical, especially there are no preprints on it.

One can dream. But realistically, it appears that rich folks are shielded from accountability pretty much everywhere.

Funnily BBC requested Trump's business records for discovery (as Trump claimed damages to his brand and businesses). I wonder why. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055423001454 The title is: "The Liar’s Dividend: Can Politicians Claim Misinformation to Evade Accountability?". And the answer is: yes.

Things are only to get dumber, aren't they?

That for sure. Plus moral judgement.

I will note that in cases where it is clear that the ailment does not heal (e.g. visible lesions, damages that impact physical movement, e.g. cerebral palsy) also carries social stigma. Obesity is also an interesting condition in that regard. It is considered lifestyle-associated and can be associated with moral judgement. At the same time, it has become so common in many societies that to some degree it is also normalized in part. Substance use disorders are similar, they are behavioral conditions, and have a heavy stigma (and as bonus, they can also exacerbate mental health conditions). Perhaps it is neither here nor there, but one definition of stigma is a visible indicator of disease, though perhaps not what OP has in mind. On the other side of the spectrum there are invisible conditions, like chronic pain, or autoimmune diseases. While the condition itself might not be stigmatized, individuals are frequently suffering from disbelief, i.e. folks think that their condition is not that bad, or they are just making things up to get out of work. And when it come to all of these conditions, there are degrees and on the extreme end I am fairly sure most have some sort of stigma or something similar to it. I suspect one can quibble about the precise definition of stigma, but, say, having a deadly infectious disease gets you isolated from any direct human contact quite literally.

While an amplifier, I am not sure whether an outside agent is really needed for this to happen. I will remind you that even before social media, fear of foreigners was a strong catalyst. However, there were certain social norms that disallowed serious parties to go full nazis. Of course, one could argue that softening these norms was caused by social media, certainly, the sentiments were much older. In this discussion regarding Saxony-Anhalt one should add that over the last decade it was getting a bit of a recovery with net migration into the state, filling some critical gaps contributing to growth. But a big chunk came from immigrants (e.g., Ukrainians) which then fed into the AFD narrative of folks taking their cookies. Probably obvious, but worth pointing out that compared to other states the proportion of foreigners to Germans is way lower than West German states. But again, this is not a new narrative and as folks never really cared for the actual numbers, there really was no need to fake info. It just "feels" right and that is all there is to populism. Edit: but of course money from Russia and support from extremists like, I dunno the US government, Musk and Thiel does help.

There is both. Even before social media some resentment was there between East and West, after the honeymoon period of reunification. Unfortunately there were also many old folks who actually want all that, minus the defeat in WWII and they taught their kids (now the old generation) accordingly. But yes crucial memory is fading. They do care but mostly for themselves and they lack the critical thinking skills to align that with reality. There is significant degree of that, though there are other factors at play. Almost everyone seems to feel left behind somehow. It is just some groups radicalize faster than others. But something weird is happening to society.

Based on the style of "discussions" I think what is really being sought is an echo chamber, which are easier to find in more modern types of social media rather than fora. Consider what OP, often uncritically, considers to be true, I also suspect that they are already exposed to them, so not sure if there is anything to recommend (the algorithm will do it).

I don't think that the assumption in OP is universally true. Ignoring the divide between mental and physical for now, there are a lot of conditions that stigmatized. Infectious diseases are one, where certain types, especially STIs carry a huge stigma. And likewise, there mental disorders of varying degrees and some have been very much normalized, sometimes to very weird degrees.

VW did invest into east Germany. What recall is that they reworked facilities such as in Zwickau. So there were heavy west German investment into the east. Yes, and much are historic structural issues. The fact that the west is draining talent and that Germany as a whole was resistant to immigration didn't help. Outside of major university cities the East especially didn't like to recruit foreigners, which would have helped the economy somewhat, so there is some self-inflicted pain and we see some of the worst elements happening in the east (aging community, stagnating economics and so on). The big one however is that the DDR was built on industries that were on the decline already and while service economy become more relevant in the West, they were largely absent in the East. Entrepreneurs would ultimately go West Germany for more opportunities. It is a bit like the situation between Canada and the US, only that mobility within Germany, and given the short distances is way higher. Fundamentally, there are folks full of nostalgia regarding their memories of the DDR, in which the government was propping up unproductive structures.