"Help! My child is becoming right wing!": Leading Berlin newspaper provides "tips for democratic parents" who are forced to deal with "undemocratic children"

Germany has the stupidest political discourse on earth.

This obviously charming, cheerful and not at all withered or overwrought woman is named Eva Prausner. She is a social worker, and she directs something called the “Project for Strengthening Parents,” which provides “Training, networking, and counselling in the area of family and right-wing extremism.” This means that she runs around telling parents what to do when they suspect their children are succumbing to political wrong-think. And this in turn makes Frau Prausner the woman of the hour, for never before in the history of the Federal Republic have so many undemocratic children bloomed under the noses of so many upstanding democratic parents.

It is very hard to understand how this happened. The leftists and the Greens, after all, have been doing the Lord’s work teaching leftism and Greenism in schools for decades now, but despite their valiant efforts we are rapidly losing our youth to malign antidemocratic forces. It can’t be that elevating leftoid lunacy into an establishment ideology has backfired, transforming the once cool, counter-cultural left into a political movement for middle-aged scolds and schoolmarms – the kind of thing from which teenagers flee in terror. No, nothing could be less plausible. The real reason for the pandemic of right-wing children must simply be that we haven’t indoctrinated them enough. If parents will not do their part and bring indoctrination also to the home, our democracy will collapse and it will be 1933 all over again, just like it was 1933 all over again two weeks ago after the elections in Thüringen and Saxony.

For these reasons, Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin’s largest daily newspaper, interviewed Prausner on her advice for parents who find themselves forced to deal with their evil, right-leaning spawn. The product is a prescient write-up for the ages bearing the headline “Help, my child is turning right-wing! Eight tips for democratic parents with undemocratic children.”

The rightward shift in East Germany is a shift above all among the youngest, as the elections in Saxony and Thüringen have shown. One in three young people there voted for the far right. In Thüringen, as many as 38% of 18- to 34-year-olds cast their ballot for the AfD – more than in any other age group. Many a parent who values living in a democracy will have wondered: “What have we done wrong?”

In Brandenburg, too, it is becoming clear that even the youngest are now leaning towards the right. In the under-16 vote a week before the state election, the AfD came out on top with around 30% … In the state elections on 22 September, the AfD could become the strongest force, thanks in part to young first-time voters.

Do parents still have any influence over their AfD-voting children?

Alas, Prausner is not very certain that they do, but she believes that democratic parents “should at least try” to rescue their children from the grave heresy of voting for the wrong political parties. Children in Brandenburg are particularly endangered, because Brandenburg is largely rural, and Prausner has discovered that the countryside is absolutely dripping with “condensed prejudicial attitudes.” There is so much racial prejudice in the Brandenburg air that it is collecting on cool surfaces, like windows and beer glasses, that is how bad things are there. Also all children everywhere are in danger because the internet is a powerful right-wing force that helps bad organisations like the AfD pump their fascist mind virus directly into millions of young yet-forming cerebral cortices.

There is, in short, every reason to be very terrified of your kids, and as a parent, the first thing you need to do is learn how to recognise whether they’re becoming literal Nazis right under your nose. Unfortunately, according to Prausner, modern-day Nazism is largely asymptomatic, yielding “fewer and fewer clear signs.” While it may be “difficult to identify a child’s political attitude from their clothing,” “racist, sexist or queerphobic language” can be an “indication.” Of course as we’ve seen the smartphone is basically a digital portal direct to fascism, and so you should keep a close eye on your kid’s mobile:

Looking over your child’s shoulder at his smartphone – a central vector of creeping radicalisation – can also provide insights. Prausner advises a proactive approach, especially if the relationship is still intact. “What are you doing on TikTok? Do you follow any AfD accounts?”

If these questions aren’t fruitful, Prausner thinks an unauthorised look at the phone is justifiable. “I don’t encourage parents to do that. Parents have to respect the personal rights of young people. But if there is a danger to be averted, an unauthorised look at the phone would be legitimate for reasons of care.”

There is absolutely no way that this kind of political policing will backfire, because teenagers have never been attracted to subversive counter-cultural movements of which their parents disapprove. There are no examples of this in recent history at all.

Anyway, so now you’ve snatched your kid’s phone and found that he is indeed an ardent subscriber to all manner of AfD TikTok accounts. After you’ve gotten over the “shock” and associated “feelings of shame,” Prausner advises you to seek professional help as soon as possible. Ideally, you’ll go straight to her Project for Strengthening Parents and become one of the two to four families that she counsels over the telephone every month. There is some chance that your child is only going through “a phase,” but if his attitudes have become “entrenched,” you’re facing a long and difficult path. Your relationship will not be “intact” for much longer; there will soon be a lot of “anger” and “frustration,” and you’re going to need “patience.” Political reeducation is no easy thing.

The next thing to do, is remember to stay in touch with your kid – however many evil fascist things he says to you. Ideally, you should respond not with direct disagreement, but with “first-person statements that express your hurt and shock.” Statements like: “When you speak so disparagingly about people, it hurts me. I don’t want you to discriminate against your fellow students.” You should also try to scare your kid by telling him that being a fascist will destroy his prospects. Prausner advises saying things like “You’re ruining your future with this.” What you can’t do, though, is deploy “authoritarian tactics” against “right-wing views,” I guess because that’s what right-wingers do. As good progressive liberal democrats, we know that a surfeit of screechy words, a steady nagging and verbal dripping always on the same spot, manipulative appeals to your own emotional distress and hyperestrogenic histrionics are the only way. While there is positively, categorically no chance any of this will have the opposite of its intended effect, it’s probably not a bad idea to give the whole matter a rest now and again. On occasion, Prausner says, “you can have a pizza together and try not to cause any offence” with the Nazi nagging.

Okay, so you figured out from your kid’s iPhone that he’s a fascist, you’re harassing him about his fascism almost every day except when you order pizza and everybody is frustrated and angry. What now? Well, you need to try to understand your undemocratic child’s motivations. If you’re dealing with a case of male fascism, it’s all about masculinity. Your boy has become a Nazi because “right-wing communities offer young men the chance to empower themselves,” primarily by “devaluing women and people whom they perceive to be inferior in their racist worldview.” Girls, however, mainly go fascist because they “feel overwhelmed by social expectations to pursue a career, have a family and also be attractive.” Fascism tells girls that they can just be a mother and a housewife and that’s much less complicated. The upside here is that fascist girls are less likely to have the racism comorbidity. One less demon to exorcise!

Now that we’ve worked out why your kid’s a National Socialist, it’s time to find other ways to satisfy his needs. Your masculine son, for example, should replace his fascisms with gym workouts. Unfortunately, this is dangerous, because a lot of fitness clubs and trainers also turn out to be right-wing fascists for some mysterious reason. Prausner warns in particular that sending your boy off to martial arts training might just serve to entrench his fascism further. When it comes to your daughter – assuming that you’re dealing with the merely fascist and not the dual fascist-racist variety – you’ll need to scare her by telling her that fascists are super violent. Girls don’t like violence so if you impress this upon them hard enough they’ll give up their Nazism and return to democracy. “I’d argue that the right-wing scene is extremely violent,” Prausner says, “particularly when it comes to domestic violence, with all that sexism going on.”

All right, so, just to keep track – you snatched your kid’s iPhone and discovered he was a fascist, you embarked upon the periodic-nagging-with-occasional-pizza-break routine, you’ve traced the aetiology of his fascism to injured masculinity, and you’re looking high and low for a non-fascist athletic pursuit where he can be a man more democratically. Everyone is still mad, your son still thinks the AfD are cool, and he’s additionally pissed off that you insist on quizzing all his gym friends on their politics. Is there anything else to do – anything else at all?

Yes, there are two final things. Penultimately, you can “involve the community” by staging an antifascist intervention. “It helps,” Prausner says, “when young people are confronted with a group that disapproves of their behaviour.” Recruit your kid’s “wider circle of friends,” get his “grandparents, teachers, uncles and aunts” over to your house to join you in scolding him for having political preferences that differ from yours. This is absolutely the ticket, your child will absolutely, positively thank you for this. Should the intervention somehow fail to eradicate his fascism, however, you must remember the last thing, which is not to “lose heart” and to continue “exemplifying democratic values and taking a stand against prejudice and discrimination.” Also, because by now you have surely unleashed an unending torrent of intrafamilial discord and disharmony, you “must not lose sight of [your] own needs.” Maybe schedule a few extra no-fascism-scolding pizza dinners and understand that you, too, “need a supportive environment.”