The town I live in burned down almost completely in 1787, so most historic buildings in the city were built after that. The city wall is probably the oldest structure, but it’s unknown when it was originally built. The oldest building with a known year of construction is most likely the church that was built in 1246.

Not necessarily. If you have a lot of experience or a different perspective and you seem trustworthy to me, you don’t need to have a good argument. On the other hand, if someone else comes along with a good argument why your opinion is wrong, I will start doubting you.

For example, if you’ve been growing potatoes for 30 years, you don’t have to explain the biochemistry of potatoes for me to respect your advice. And if you’re a black person telling me that our town is terribly racist, I will believe you without needing a list of every single racist incident that happened to you.

People don’t dislike neoliberalism, they dislike the effects it has on society. But they fail to connect the dots.

I think one of the main problems is that there’s no “home” for people leaning left. The SPD has long dropped the “S” from it’s name, it’s just another conservative party representing those who are already well-off, without any ideas or plans to improve life for those who are exploited in our current system. Die Linke is completely detached from reality and too busy with fighting between themselves to address the giant issues that they should have the answers for. Greens are a climate/environment party first and they’re too elitist to pick up any of the angry people who (rightfully) feel like they’ve been cheated by the system.

So when you have a well organized, populist party on the far-right that provides (wrong) answers for those people, it’s no wonder they flock to them. Of course, you’ll always have those who are actual fascists and will always vote for a fascist party, but a strong left could easily draw a lot of the other voters away from the AfD.