Why more young men in Germany are turning to the far-right

As well as gender, migration and economic issues, social media is playing a part. Platforms like TikTok allow political groups to bypass mainstream, traditional media, which the far-right regard as hostile.

It’s clear that AfD “dominates” TikTok when compared to other German parties, says Mauritius Dorn from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). It has 539,000 followers on its parliamentary account, compared to 158,000 for the SPD who currently have the most seats in the German parliament.

And it isn’t just official accounts but a “considerable number of unofficial fan accounts also help to disseminate the party’s content”, says Mr Dorn.

Through setting up 10 “persona-based” accounts with different user profiles, they found, “those users who are more on the right-wing spectrum… see a lot of AfD content whereas users from the leftist spectrum see a more diverse set of political content.”

TikTok has said it doesn’t “differentiate” between the right, left or centre of politics and works to stay at the “forefront” of tackling misinformation.

Dorn observes that other parties recognised sites such as TikTok “too late”, which means they’re playing catch-up in establishing a strong footprint on the platform.

We’ve met one AfD influencer, Celina Brychcy – a 25-year-old TikTokker who has more than 167,000 followers – 53% of whom are male, with 76% aged between 18 and 35.

She mainly shares dance, trend and lifestyle videos, but also pro-AfD content.