Likes for Antisemitism: The Alternative für Deutschland and its Posts on Facebook
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Abstract
The Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD) entry into the German Bundestag in September
2017 represented a shift in post-1945 German political tradition and the social acceptance
of a party from the far right. During the election campaign, the AfD relied heavily on
the social media mostly using Facebook to spread its agenda. This research on the AfD’s
attitude toward National Socialism, the Holocaust and antisemitism on Facebook shows
that the party utilizes antisemitic stereotypes to defame political opponents and that further,
the AfD instrumentalizes events from the Third Reich to elevate perceived positive aspects
and strives to rehabilitate certain facets of National Socialism. The article first shows how
the AfD uses Facebook to spread its unfiltered political views. Then, three case studies
posted by the AfD will be analyzed. Additionally, the comments under the Facebook posts
are taken into account to show how their followers perceive antisemitic posts made by
AfD officials.
2017 represented a shift in post-1945 German political tradition and the social acceptance
of a party from the far right. During the election campaign, the AfD relied heavily on
the social media mostly using Facebook to spread its agenda. This research on the AfD’s
attitude toward National Socialism, the Holocaust and antisemitism on Facebook shows
that the party utilizes antisemitic stereotypes to defame political opponents and that further,
the AfD instrumentalizes events from the Third Reich to elevate perceived positive aspects
and strives to rehabilitate certain facets of National Socialism. The article first shows how
the AfD uses Facebook to spread its unfiltered political views. Then, three case studies
posted by the AfD will be analyzed. Additionally, the comments under the Facebook posts
are taken into account to show how their followers perceive antisemitic posts made by
AfD officials.
Topics
Antisemitism Antisemitism: Discourse Antisemitism: Far right Main Topic: Antisemitism Politics Social Media
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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
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Bibliographic Information
Likes for Antisemitism: The Alternative für Deutschland and its Posts on Facebook. 2020: https://archive.jpr.org.uk/object-1142
