Judith Dada on the Rise of the AfD

You know, there's a debate about what it is that caused this vote.

One progressive economist sort of shared a poll in which people emphasize their concerns about the standard of living.

So she sort of had highlighted one answer to the poll and neglected to point out that the one just above that with more people was that people were concerned about immigration.

I think one of the things... that the details of this debate sometimes gets wrong.

It's just a much broader sense of malaise, that things are going in the wrong direction.

And it might have to do with a feeling that the state can't generally control its borders and therefore we're not really controlling who's coming in and that's a challenge to public safety, etc.

That can have to do with the fact that inflation is high and we don't get the sense that things are looking up economically.

But I think it is a kind of more deeply rooted sense that our model is in crisis and the people who are in charge don't really know what to do about that.

And if you're being sympathetic to that general feeling, there is something to it.

I feel very strongly when I'm in Britain, where I was last week for an event with Franz Fukuyama, So if you haven't yet listened to the series of conversations I've had with Frank, dear listeners, you should go and do that.

But it's a really stark contrast between when I came to Britain to study a couple of decades ago and today.

But I do also feel it coming to Germany.

Right? Famously, the German trains no longer work.

They're now less punctual than the Italian ones.

And people are always a little bit skeptical when I say it to them, but it really is very striking to what extent you encounter problems virtually every time you try to take the train and people have just kind of organized their lives around the idea that German trains are just like never reliable.

It is true of the German car manufacturing sector, which has just really fallen behind the times.

And then it's also true in the sector in which you're active and make a living, which is European tech and German tech in particular.

What is your impression? Is that a kind of overstatement or is the German model really falling apart in ways that however rational the response of voting for a party of bank robbers and porn producers maybe makes it rational to be very concerned about our ability to confront these challenges?

Yeah, I think very much.

And let me take a step back by kind of saying that I do think the root of the problem is both kind of moral and an economic problem.

I do think there's a moral dimension here where people feel like there was a lot of progressive change that we've made over a relatively short period of time.

Much of this change, you know, people like me benefited from and much of this change I welcomed.

But it was change that, you know, left people with a feeling of, I'm no longer able to say this.

You know, in Germany, there was a huge discussion around gender, you know, and like, gender and you know whether you say you know kind of the female version of the word or the male version of the word and like a lot of this discussion that I think in many ways was like really didn't really matter like this whole gender discussion I always thought it got so much airtime relative to like the actual relevance that it had for like our day-to-day lives

And just by the way, to illustrate this for the audience, because it's in some ways a much more extreme version than anything that we've discussed in the English language, it's helpful to point out some of the changes that were made in the German language.

You know, there's a debate about what it is that caused this vote.

One progressive economist sort of shared a poll in which people emphasize their concerns about the standard of living.

So she sort of had highlighted one answer to the poll and neglected to point out that the one just above that with more people was that people were concerned about immigration.

I think one of the things... that the details of this debate sometimes gets wrong.

It's just a much broader sense of malaise, that things are going in the wrong direction.

And it might have to do with a feeling that the state can't generally control its borders and therefore we're not really controlling who's coming in and that's a challenge to public safety, etc.

That can have to do with the fact that inflation is high and we don't get the sense that things are looking up economically.

But I think it is a kind of more deeply rooted sense that our model is in crisis and the people who are in charge don't really know what to do about that.

And if you're being sympathetic to that general feeling, there is something to it.

I feel very strongly when I'm in Britain, where I was last week for an event with Franz Fukuyama, So if you haven't yet listened to the series of conversations I've had with Frank, dear listeners, you should go and do that.

But it's a really stark contrast between when I came to Britain to study a couple of decades ago and today.

But I do also feel it coming to Germany.

Right? Famously, the German trains no longer work.

They're now less punctual than the Italian ones.

And people are always a little bit skeptical when I say it to them, but it really is very striking to what extent you encounter problems virtually every time you try to take the train and people have just kind of organized their lives around the idea that German trains are just like never reliable.

It is true of the German car manufacturing sector, which has just really fallen behind the times.

And then it's also true in the sector in which you're active and make a living, which is European tech and German tech in particular.

What is your impression? Is that a kind of overstatement or is the German model really falling apart in ways that however rational the response of voting for a party of bank robbers and porn producers maybe makes it rational to be very concerned about our ability to confront these challenges?

Yeah, I think very much.

And let me take a step back by kind of saying that I do think the root of the problem is both kind of moral and an economic problem.

I do think there's a moral dimension here where people feel like there was a lot of progressive change that we've made over a relatively short period of time.

Much of this change, you know, people like me benefited from and much of this change I welcomed.

But it was change that, you know, left people with a feeling of, I'm no longer able to say this.

You know, in Germany, there was a huge discussion around gender, you know, and like, gender and you know whether you say you know kind of the female version of the word or the male version of the word and like a lot of this discussion that I think in many ways was like really didn't really matter like this whole gender discussion I always thought it got so much airtime relative to like the actual relevance that it had for like our day-to-day lives

And just by the way, to illustrate this for the audience, because it's in some ways a much more extreme version than anything that we've discussed in the English language, it's helpful to point out some of the changes that were made in the German language.