Being legal as a lifestyle | Why are more and more young people becoming right-wing?

Cliche? Well, the bus stop really is in the Uckermark. Photo: IMAGO/serienlicht What does it mean when young people say they are right-wing?

Of course that depends on the individual, but my book is about those who have no real political background. These are young people who are in the discovery phase and are oriented towards the cool older people. Unfortunately, in the younger generation's opinion, the strong, right-wing boys are cool. You are quickly accepted into such cliques. Then, in my perception, it starts not with politics, but with a style – with a bomber jacket, a T-shirt, a hairstyle. Then it continues with bullying and provocations.

You wrote a book about it. When did you think it was necessary?

Two years ago, when there were state elections in Saxony, I wrote the text “the swastikas next door”. It was about swastika graffiti in my neighborhood, which can still be seen regularly in the same place two years later. When I noticed them back then, I thought about how I would deal with them. I also noticed that young people are increasingly asking themselves the question: “Are you right-wing or left-wing?” Young people scan their friends’ Instagram accounts and see who they follow and what emojis they use. Right-wing groups demonstrated in the city center every week without any resistance. Something changed. We no longer had the hard radicals like before Corona, but it had become a kind of lifestyle. Based on this, I wrote the text that was the starting point for this book.

Manuela Müller has been working as a reporter at the “Freie Presse” in Chemnitz since the 2000s – previously as a local journalist in Plauen, now as a reporter. She has been awarded the German Reporter Prize several times for her social reports, in the “Best Essay” category in 2024 and for the “Best Local Report” in 2025. She was also nominated for the Theodor Wolff Prize.

The young people in your book identify as right-wing and at the same time reject being called Nazis. How do you understand these terms?

What I took away is that being a Nazi has a negative connotation - even in right-wing circles. Nobody really knows what that means. "I don't want to be a Nazi, but I like inhumane videos." “Being right,” on the other hand, has really arrived in society, also through the AfD.

What about Nazi symbols like the swastika?

I don't think young people associate that with National Socialism. This is provocation - which of course also means that there is a lack of discussion and knowledge about this time. There are stories circulating among young people about Adolf Hitler in which he is trivialized. In this he is not a mass murderer, but the man who advanced the economy and built highways. These are absolutely crazy stories.

Is school late? You write that young people become right-wing before they have learned anything about National Socialism.

Absolutely. Because it begins in the phase in which you look: “Where do I belong and who am I?” While the young people are already orienting themselves towards conspicuous right-wing groups, they are still dealing with the Stone Age in history lessons. This is about a quiet, gradual process that we all seem to overlook. The young people still have no knowledge about this terrible part of German history. I also see it as a big problem that children are divided in the education system and said: You go to high school and you don't. You can see from the U18 elections that there is a much stronger development to the right in high schools. This is a homegrown theme.

I'm not a social scientist, but I do believe that there are things that should change. It is a shame that school is not a space that students generally enjoy going to. It's actually a great place where encounters take place. I think there is a need to think about how school becomes a place where I get education that makes me a good person. This requires enough staff. Often it's just a matter of covering the timetable at the moment. You can't blame schools for everything. But it is a place that every person visits at some point. In Saxony, former Prime Minister Stanislaw Tillich said in 2017 that it was a mistake to keep political education out of schools. I think that's right - although of course it's a fine line. It must not happen that we have a political radiation like before in the GDR.

How can you deal with young people who have already become radicalized?

That is very ambivalent. On the one hand, school is a protected space, but if someone makes a swastika out of sticks in the school yard, that obviously has to be taken into account. But how can I sanction a ten-year-old child? A ten year old child cannot be a Nazi. So what needs to happen to educate children in a child-friendly way, to say: “Man, do you know what that means? And do you know when that was used?" That would be desirable for me. I think it's very difficult for teachers to be faced with something like this. This requires a language and good, objective communication.

Her book also provides insights into the justice system. What did you observe?

For example, I spoke to a 17-year-old girl who was in the Chemnitz women's prison with Beate Zschäpe - not in a cell, but they had work therapy together. There they made candlesticks together – six hours a day. This young girl searching for her own identity came together with a highly manipulative terrorist. The reason is that there are far fewer female offenders than men and therefore there is no separation between juvenile detention centers and women's prisons. But I ask myself: Why doesn't anyone care about it? A young girl sits with a terrorist and they like each other. It's like the swastika graffiti. That is just accepted. It happened to me that I reported such graffiti to the police and was confronted with an incredibly bureaucratic act. The woman laughed because I wanted to report it on the phone. She found that absurd.

What role can local journalism play?

In local journalism we are incredibly close. This makes it difficult to deal with. If you write about a situation, some people may stop talking to you afterwards. In the book, for example, I report on a Simson meeting where kids gave the Hitler salute and ran around with a swastika painted on them. I wrote a report about it, which was not well received by the organizer. But I also told you what he had done beforehand to prevent that from happening. I think it's incredibly important to write about such observations and also tell what happened before. We need reports and portraits, especially in local journalism. This way we can develop more understanding than in hard news. We need more backgrounds, more connections, more depth. Unfortunately, as local journalists we have a pretty quiet voice. And there are economic imperatives. What gets clicked are just headlines. The nuances don't click.

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