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.

I didn’t fully quit reddit, but I’m going to Lemmy first and foremost and rarely go back to reddit for very specific communities. My reddit usage dropped by 90+% probably, but I’m not completely gone.

I’m sure the same is true for many other users as well, so simply counting the number of (active) users then and now won’t get even close to the actual loss in traffic and participation.