One in five Germans believe they need revolution, and not reforms, to improve the living standards of their country and a third of people agreed that capitalism leads to poverty and hunger, in a new study that found Germany to be much further to the left than previously thought.
In the study released by the Free University of Berlin, titled “Against state and capital – for the revolution”, 20 percent of the surveyed people agreed with the statement that “living conditions won’t be improved by reforms – we need a revolution”, reports the German edition of The Local.
The findings also show that 48 percent thought that a deep-rooted xenophobia existed in modern day Germany and about 20 percent said they saw the rise of a new fascism in their country as a real danger. But the most people quizzed by researchers (62 percent) said that German democracy isn’t real democracy, because it is the economy not the electorate that has the biggest say.
There were also prominent gaps found between the former East and West, with 60 percent of the people in the eastern states feeling that socialism is a good idea that has merely been poorly implemented. In comparison, only 37 percent of people in the west agreed with this statement.
Half of the respondents believe there is an increased surveillance of left-wing dissidents by police and the state and 27% even say that Germany is on its way towards a dictatorship because it is spying on its citizens.
The researchers, who wanted to see if there are structural similarities in Germany’s extreme-left and extreme-right camps, also found that 14 percent agree with violence against “the system” and 46 percent are in favor of abolishing the state’s monopoly on the use of force.
The data shows a clear and sizable faction of people who are anti-capitalist, anti-fascist and have a bad opinion on the democracy in Germany, with left-wing related violence seeing a stark increase in recent years.