1 in 5 Germans call their country an 'autocracy': Poll
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A poll by Bielefeld University reveals that around a third expressed their belief that their government is lying to them.
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A man is taken away by police officers in Stuttgart, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, on September 16, 2023. (AP)
According to a new poll conducted by Bielefeld University, more than a fifth of Germans consider the country an autocracy, and a third feel certain the governing leaders are blatantly lying to them.
The poll is conducted every two years on behalf of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a political think tank affiliated with the ruling Social Democratic Party.
The results of the poll, seen by RIA Novosti, indicated that 21% of Germans expressed the country was shifting away from democracy, a number that has risen from the 16% who believed so in the previous study that took place between 2020 and 2021.
According to the survey, 18% of those polled believe the government is behaving illegally, up from 16% in the prior research. Nearly half of respondents accused democratically oriented parties of demagogy, 34% said the government was "hiding the truth," and 30% said it was "lying to the people."
A third of those polled also said German politicians were merely puppets in the hands of others, and an identical number accused the media of colluding with the government. Furthermore, 38% said their freedom of speech was being restricted, an increase of 11% from the prior poll.
Earlier, at the end of May, a poll published by the Bild revealed that support for the AfD party has increased its popular base to a five-year high amid growing distrust toward the Greens.
Katja Hoyer, an Anglo-German historian, detailed to The Spectator that more Germans are now abandoning conventional politics. Recent polls demonstrate that the ruling coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens, and Liberals (FDP) would presently receive only 38% of the vote, while the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) would take 19% on its own, more than any of the three existing ruling parties, including chancellor Olaf Scholz's SPD.
Hoyer noted that for some, populism is indeed the reason they like the party. A German woman expressed concern regarding "mistakes in the country’s refugee policy" and a government "that doesn’t care about Germany."
She also expressed discontent about the state's control. "They tell us how to live, which cars we should drive, what we should eat, and how we should heat our homes."
The AfD is not the source of, but rather a manifestation of, the broad sense of crisis, Hoyer concluded.
