Left-wing influencer unpacks: “Fascism wins because it is more entertaining”

Dara Sasmaz: On their social media strategy. This is what determines the elections today, as all the data and studies show. More visibility increases the likelihood that you will be elected. And the AfD simply dominates this space. They are also manipulating the elections by having help from Russia, through masses of bots that flood the platforms with false information. With this overwhelming majority, it's actually a miracle that they don't get 80 or 90 percent of the votes, but 'only' around 40. That shows that they need a lot to crack a person. Democratic parties actually have it easier. But they should finally get rolling.

Sasmaz: There is this sentence in the military: Amateurs take care of strategy and tactics and professionals take care of logistics. So: How do I even get my troops to the front? How much gas do I have for my tanks? And it's the same with election campaigns. Democratic politicians are always thinking, what content do I say? What policy do I put forward? They think less about how many graphic designers do I actually hire for my mail, how many editors do I actually have to edit my videos, when do I upload them, at what frequency, how many accounts do I create? And the AfD deals with that all day long. You can learn a lot from this.

Dara Marc Sasmaz produces left-wing content on social media. He reaches millions of viewers with his YouTube account. He is a trained educator and lives in Cologne.

Sasmaz: They're still hoping that they can just do a better job of distributing flyers and setting up campaign booths, but that just doesn't work. It's like trying to catch up with a jetliner on foot.

Sasmaz: No, you can do that. You have to show something, but everything you do on the street is only worth as much as you can show it on social media. The doorstep campaign itself is not very effective in terms of numbers. You know how it is, first someone has to open the door, then the person is totally annoyed and says: Dude, I'm just gaming, watching TV, cooking, or something else, you get brushed off. If someone is there and listens, in the rare case they might say, okay, I think your party is good. In the end, you rang 500,000 doors, like the left in the federal election campaign, and gained perhaps 50,000 new voters. But that doesn't explain electoral successes like in Bavaria, where the Left got 8 percent. Of course, that was primarily the social media election campaign.

Sasmaz: Terrible! They sit on the talk show and say sentences like: "Yes, against these labor market flexibility measures, we have a different idea of ​​how it should be done. We are on the side of the people and we say quite clearly that this is a mockery that Friedrich Merz has towards the ordinary employee." Nobody can listen to that. Nobody speaks like that on the street. Please just say: "What March is doing sucks. This is bullshit."

Sasmaz: They say: No, that's too dubious. But their seriousness unfortunately obscures the truth. We live in the age of trash TV! The AfD is the Trash TV of politics, right-wing extremism in general. Apparently we all don't like trash TV, but everyone watches it. This means you have to tell the truth in an exciting way, with strong feelings. The focus is always on entertainment. Leftists usually have people's material needs in mind. But from my perspective, the most important need people have is to have fun. Unfortunately, fascism wins because it is more entertaining.

Sasmaz: Exactly! There are a lot of people who follow my YouTube channel who see themselves as more serious and professional, they are doctors or engineers and don't like the AfD at all, but they are also so fed up with the fact that as voters of democratic parties they should always be calm and objective.

Sasmaz: So when it comes to the wordplay with “socialize” I would say: nice inside joke, but many people out there don’t understand it. The term “socialization” alone means nothing to many people. So this is not something that drives a majority to vote. At the same time, it is of course true that the left is doing a lot more than before, definitely. A lot more people are uploading something and they are achieving very high levels of reach, a few million every day.

Sasmaz: Yes, there are also things on the left where they are a bit resistant to advice, for example adapting their appearances on talk shows for social media, i.e. speaking in such a way that you can make short clips out of them. This causes a lot to go to waste. Because on television itself, talk shows like “Hart aber Fair” or Markus Lanz no longer have that many viewers. Most people perceive their content through clips on the Internet.

Sasmaz: What is important to understand is that there are no more election campaigns, it is always an election campaign, it is always a federal election campaign. And in Berlin, of course, the right-wing press wants an Elif Eralp to fail at all costs. That's why they will report about her and her actions every day. The left, when it governs, must therefore continue to publish as much as before, several videos a day, reporting on every good deed, no matter how small, like Zoran Mamdani, the mayor of New York. Otherwise people will only hear what Springer spreads and the left's approval ratings will quickly fall again.

No. You immediately make another video out of it and say: Look, they want to silence us, they want to restrict freedom of expression. That's how I do it too, I'm constantly in litigation, right? To be honest, such a warning fee costs perhaps 1,300 euros, which a party can easily afford. In fact, she should be happy about it, because it creates beef and drama, which is what people love. For example, when Axel Springer hits his left hand.

Sasmaz: The truth, for example: Why does Springer do that? Because they want to make us small, because we want to ensure that rents fall, that prices in the supermarket become more affordable, that the system becomes more social again, that the rich are asked to pay more. And who finances Springerverlag? These are rich billionaires and corporations. Of course they want the left to fail. And you just have to point to it.