 [DW] More than half of Germans view asylum-seekers in a negative light, a new study shows. Prejudice against the newcomers has grown even as fewer migrants come to Germany.
Right-wing populist attitudes have become "normal" in Germany's mainstream, said authors of a new study presented by the left-wing Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Berlin on Thursday.
| To the right of the left wing? That could place them anywhere from slightly less left to centrist to actually far right — whatever that last means nowadays. |
"The center is losing its footing and its democratic orientation," researchers said.
The foundation has released reports on right-wing extremism since 2002. The latest study, conducted by a group of researchers from Bielefeld University, shows that a record 54.1% of the respondents across Germany now hold a negative view of asylum-seekers.
| How very odd, given the angelic behaviour of the invaders as recorded in our admittedly spotty archives. |
The numbers are higher now than they were ahead of the refugee crisis in 2014, when 44% of Germans expressed concerns about the group. In 2016, after the peak of the migration wave, the survey showed 49.5% of people were negative about asylum-seekers.
According to the study presented on Thursday, these attitudes are more common in former East Germany, now home to less than a quarter of the country's population, where 63% were found to harbor such attitudes, while 51% did so in western Germany. The survey also shows that the level of prejudice has grown even as fewer people applied for asylum in Germany.
| A cute little table at the link shows 890,000 applied for asylum in 2015, 280,000 in 2016, and 186,644 in 2017. There is no table showing how many turned out to be registered in a variety of places under a variety of names, nor how many have disappeared from the rolls and the knowledge of Man. |
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