Europe

I think there have been studies that showed people vote for the AfD because they are racists and fascists and not because they’re somehow left behind or don’t feel included.

People have been racists and fascists before the AfD, too. But there wasn't a political climate that allowed anyone to publicly support a fascist and/or racist party without instantly being ostracised. As a result, fascist and racist parties were getting relatively little positive publicity and their election results were so meager that an attempt to ban the NPD failed for the simple reason of them not posing a realistic threat to democracy.

The entire political spectrum shifting towards the right, and the media increasingly taking up the far right's talking points, giving them a platform and positive publicity has emboldened the fascists and racists who previously would rather vote something else than throwing their vote away for a party that's not going to make it anyway to vote for the AfD. The reaction of the political establishment has been, rather than opposing their rhetoric, adopting their talking points, to such an extent that recently an AfD politician publicly boasted how the AfD doesn't even need to be in government in order to make changes, because everyone is doing their bidding anyway.

However, I do think racism is driven up by our current capitalist society where we have to fight for the scraps the billionaire class deems sufficient for us. This makes it much easier to hate every foreign person, because you feel there will be even less scraps left for you.

That's a big problem indeed and a large part of the current political climate. And instead of offering an alternative to the rat race, all relevant political parties have embraced and furthered it. There is a big vacuum on the left side of the political spectrum, a lot of the supposedly "left" political parties are neoliberal capitalists through and through and contend themselves with feel good leftism for a very small bubble of privileged (pseudo) intellectuals. Most people don't give a shit about things like gendered language (or are annoyed by it), but would instead be very much interested in making ends meet and having a life worth living with their hard earned income. But there is little to no classic working class leftism left in the left end of the political spectrum, at least not with any relevant party.

Actually Piketty writes about this in his book "capital and ideology". The left has been slowly losing support in the lower education classes which traditionally voted left, this has apparently been going on since the 1960s/70s. They either went to conservatives or stopped voting. Now that there is a new party that claims to actually listen to their concerns (even if they won't actually solve any of these concerns) causes them to flock to that party. They have been disappointed by everyone in the political system and the populists are using this to their advantage.