The Face of New Propaganda

Scroll, scroll, scroll-reel-A young woman smiles, holding an airplane-shaped balloon; the caption reads “Deportation Airlines.” Scroll, scroll, scroll-reel-an AI-generated German man, blond and masculine, protects the “German market” from AI-generated immigrants, accompanied by all the relevant stereotypes, who sell drugs. The above is not the product of an episode of “Black Mirror”; reality has surpassed it. The relevant content is part of real AfD [AfD, Alternative for Germany.It is a far-right nationalist party known for its anti-immigration and anti-EU views] election ads, from TikTok edits and fan-generated content, shaping a new political universe where power isn’t just based on persuasion through rhetoric or ideology, but on the emotional engagement of identity with the audience (4); (5); (11).

This description encapsulates the concept of participatory propaganda, with active interaction with content through sharing and production under the same codes. Through the distribution of this content, a system is created where ideology is remixed and aestheticized while utilizing users to co-create content with memes, sounds, AI visuals, and hashtags, to create a community of an imaginary nation where the audience collaborates in spreading racist, anti-establishment, and neo-nationalist narratives (4).

The aesthetic cosmogony of the AfD is not limited to a simple multiplication of followers; through a strategy based on mockery, memes, viral repetitions, and the use of music, it has managed to invest in an aesthetic that transforms politics into recognizable, and thus successful as they evoke emotions identified with this politics = vibes, promoting hostility, humor, and fear. Politicians such as Alice Weidel (The leader of the AfD) acquire the status of “influencers,” while user participation in digital discourse creates an illusion of policy co-creation (4).

@revo.2025Alice Weidel zerlegt die Linken und benennt die wahren Extremisten | #afd #aliceweidel #dielinke #politik #deutschland #extremismus #germany #politics♬ sonido original – 🔱 Brosly 🔱

The number of fan accounts promoting content in favor of the AfD (12,790, compared to just 873 for the SPD) shows that participation in the expansion of this aesthetic universe is reinforced by the affordances themselves, with enrichment through remix tools, music, and increased engagement through commentary, resulting in a surge driven by the algorithm. The average user with a leaning towards the AfD can become a producer of political narrative, using slogans such as “Deutschland braucht die AfD” (Germany needs the AfD) and anime. The result is the depoliticization of politics, with content becoming appealing not because of its ideas, but because of the way it is transformed into an aesthetic, consumer product, creating-if not consciousness-then trends (1);(4).

According to Julian Hohner, however, this participation is not spontaneous but calculated, as this digital campaign is reinforced by an algorithm that “pushes users into radical rabbit holes,” where the extreme becomes mainstream. The visual idealization of German “purity” and the simultaneous presentation of immigrants as “shadows” through AI-generated imagery is a continuation of the propaganda motifs of the Nazi period, now reinforced by artificial intelligence tools (9).

However, awareness of the fact that this “superficial” content will be promoted does not necessarily imply that the superficial gamification of political content leads not only to depoliticization, but also that these creators are not politically organized activists, but young users who approach TikTok as a stage where style prevails over substance and AfD aesthetics are reproduced as fashion or memes (5).

A typical example of the reproduction of AfD ideology through aesthetic content—which, however, does not refer to it directly, but indirectly and ideologically, is the chant “Ausländer raus, Deutschland den Deutschen” (Foreigners out, Germany for the Germans), where various rich kids who party sing it, not participating in an ideological struggle, but in a representation of power, reaction, and cultural opposition. Thus, politics becomes an experience, another piece of the feed’s vibes, necessary not because it is persuasive, but because it offers identity, belonging, and an aesthetic framework within which one can “be something”  even if only temporarily, even if ironically, even if with a lightness (6).

@fantasymoAFD WON #ai #animation #politics #history #germany #fyp♬ End of Beginning – Djo

Reinventing National Identity through AI

The above are signs of a conscious shift in political communication today. In Brandenburg, where the party is leading in the polls, a series of AI-generated advertisements have been released that present a bipolar world where, on the one hand, we have clean, well-organized, “happy” German cities with “Aryan” citizens, and on the other, dark cities with “invaders” from Middle Eastern and African countries who have elevated a fictional fringe to normality, leading Germany into disintegration (11).

This Manichean aesthetic, through AI, produces images and scenarios that have no experiential reference but activate cultural archetypes, prejudices where, through the conflict between “good and evil,” identities are constructed not rationally but through an emotional drift where fear and insecurity prevail (11). It is no coincidence that these videos had hundreds of thousands of views, despite obvious “flaws” in the depiction, such as glitches. 

@lifecreator777#freedom #freicheit #gernany🇩🇪♬ epic war cinematic trailer(1537552) – Chau

According to Marcus Bösch, this is defined as “slopaganda,” a type of propaganda with low aesthetic standards but highly emotionally charged. Retrofuturistic aesthetics, centrally placed EU flags, and themes extolling “European greatness” are presented in impressive terms a trend that seems to be gaining pan-European character, noting success, and causing concern, as the prevalence of emotion over arguments and rational management of ideas in an era of multiple crises, in a Europe that is attempting to reconstruct itself, may lead to teratogenesis (4);(5).

How does the AfD assimilate young people?

After all, what gives this type of propaganda its name, “participatory”, is also the reason for its success, namely the unification of politics and community. Alice Weidel’s “fan edits,” songs with nationalist connotations, imitations of speeches, and repetitive sound bites (Deutschland braucht die AfD=Germany needs the AfD) constitute a new form of political participation. AfD followers do not seem to feel that they are advocating for a party in the sense of strengthening its political power, but rather that they belong to a digital movement that expresses their national anxiety in an aesthetically familiar and socially recognizable way. Consequently, communicative success also lies in a populist politics of familiarity that changes our understanding of democratic participation in the meta-era (2);(4); (8);(10).

In a related study, the German Economic Institute and the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung show that the AfD has built the most extensive TikTok ecosystem of “fans” than any other party, a sign not only of numerical success but also of digital narrative hegemony (1).

The TikTok platform transforms politics into a continuous cultural experience, accessible in a few seconds of sound and image, allowing relevant narratives to “enter” into the “public square” with an entertainment wrapper, incorporating a politically immature age group and exposing it to ideological content not at the level of ideas, as has been noted, possibly overlooking the political origins of what they are participating in. The significant acceptance of the AfD by young people, with 22% of those aged 14–29 supporting it, according to a recent poll, reveals a critical shift, that the new generation is not repelled by radicalism but experiences it as authenticity, within a political landscape that they experience as a “closed” and rather corrupt circle of people and practices (1), (2), (4).

The gamification of politics also functions as a tool for social inclusion for young people who experience alienation or identify themselves as anti-establishment, where the opportunity to contribute to the AfD’s communication policy provides them with digital visibility, allowing them to be heard and seen in the “public square” as never before. These users find in digital activism in favor of the AfD not only content, but recognition, participation, and community, with the AfD benefiting from the absence of a corresponding emotional language from the democratic parties (5).

Of course, the audience for this content is not only those marginalized from political life, but also young people from privileged social strata, as the incident on the island of Sylt (a luxury island in Germany, known for wealth, beach clubs, and elite visitors) showed. For this social group, the issue is not visibility and the need to participate- nor even complete identification with these ideas- but rather a privileged relationship with the world without boundaries (co-)existence and filling the existential void through the search for identity. The so-called “Wohlstandsverwahrloste” (young people who grew up in abundance but without moral guidance or emotional closeness) are attracted by the confrontational mood and the “anti-establishment” facade of the far right. The AfD, through an anti-establishment stance that does not threaten their interests, offers them a “revolutionary” voice and a purpose, so that the reproduction of Nazi slogans in Sylt serves as an identity test in an environment without consequences, confirming that radicalization is not a class phenomenon but a conscious, cultural construct that can also be socially rewarding for its participants. In the end, the AfD does not offer them solutions, but rather integration, identity, and an adversary- and hence a purpose (6).

From Campaign to Experience

In conclusion, the AfD’s new type of propaganda reveals that effective political communication (sic) in the digital age does not only function dialectically through positions and proposals, but achieves much more when it ventures into the realm of aesthetics,  identity, and emotional engagement. The visualization of ideology does not necessarily seek votes; it seeks shares, memes, and co-creation. This shapes a new kind of “participation,” more experiential and emotional than rational (5).

The AfD has not simply capitalized on communication through the platform’s capabilities, but has constructed a digital hypernational fantasy. After all, nations are not simply biological communities, but “imaginary constructs based on performative forms of memory and tradition” (7). In the case of the AfD, this performativity is no longer reproduced in national celebrations and school textbooks, but in TikTok loops, in the sounds and filters of a nostalgic, “pure” Germany that may never have existed.

What the phenomenon of “participatory propaganda” warns us about through the case of the AfD is that the democratic public sphere is threatened not only by repression but also by trend-based participation, a possible identification through irony, fear, and the construction of an emotionally charged community that guards the nation and calls you to this digital crusade of memes.

The response to this phenomenon cannot simply be a deconstruction; on the contrary, there is a serious need to reinvent a democratic culture of belonging, where the existential needs of young people for a voice, for community, for a role can be expressed. Because if the nation can reimagine itself with cheap filters and glitches, then democracy can- and must- become a participatory experience; after all, that is how it began,  and a return to its roots through rationality rather than illusory dreams can bring back memories such as a new articulation of l’imagination au pouvoir.

Endnotes

1.Amadeu Antonio Stiftung, & Else-Frenkel-Brunswik-Institut. (2024). Swipe, like, vote: Rechtsextreme Radikalisierung und Gegenstrategien auf TikTok. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. https://www.fes.de/public/FES/Newsletter-Bilder_APB/PDFs/FES-Analyse-Swipe-Like-Vote-v09.pdf

2. Beauduin, A. (2025, March). The social media domination of the German far right. European Center for Digital Action. https://eucoda.org/publications/the-social-media-domination-of-the-german-far-right/

3. Blumenthaler, L. (2024, March 26). Warum die AfD auf TikTok gerade so erfolgreich ist. Amadeu Antonio Stiftung. https://www.amadeu-antonio-stiftung.de/warum-die-afd-auf-tiktok-gerade-so-erfolgreich-ist-110311/

4. Bösch, M. (2023). How far-right parties are winning TikTok. marcusboesch.de. https://marcusboesch.de/how-far-right-parties-are-winning-tiktok/

5. Bösch, M., & Divon, T. (2024). The sound of disinformation: TikTok, computational propaganda, and the invasion of Ukraine. New Media & Society, 26(9). https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241251804

6. Thurau, K. (2024, May 27). Why Nazi slogans and xenophobia appeal to rich kids. Deutsche Welle. https://p.dw.com/p/4gLe4

7. Hobsbawm, E., & Ranger, T. (Eds.). (1983). The invention of tradition. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107295636

8. Kartte, F. (2024, October 3). What AfD’s dark campaign in Germany tells us about disinformation. Tech Policy Press. https://techpolicy.press/what-afds-dark-campaign-in-germany-tells-us-about-disinformation/

9. Schmitz, R. (2024, April 18). Germany’s far-right AfD is thriving on TikTok. Why? NPR. https://www.npr.org/2024/04/18/1245478934/germanys-far-right-afd-is-thriving-on-tiktok-why

10. Šlerka, J. (2025, April 17). How the far-right and far-left went viral on German TikTok. Investigace.cz / Vsquare. https://vsquare.org/how-the-far-right-and-far-left-went-viral-on-german-tiktok/

11. Bösch, M. (2025, March 4). 140: Pan-European Propaganda. Substack. https://tiktoktiktoktiktok.substack.com/p/140-pan-european-propaganda