In contrast, voters punished the incumbent traffic light (red-yellow-green) coalition, consisting of the Social Democrats (SPD), the Liberals (FDP) and the Greens.

The Greens received a sobering 11.9%. This result falls in line with the Greens’ steady decline of approval among the populace over the last couple of years. It also compounds another bruising election campaign — figuratively and literally. During this EU campaign, politicians and campaign workers across all major parties had to endure an unparalleled amount of verbal and physical attacks. Politicians and members of the Greens were particularly affected.

Greens are under attack

Greens chairwoman Ricarda Lang revealed that, on February 16, 2023, she received death threats in her constituency office. Multiple other female politicians also received similar threats around that time. In January 2024, a mob of angry farmers harassed Robert Habeck, the Vice-Chancellor, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, and member of the Greens. He was unable to alight from a ferry because of this. On February 14, 2024, in the southwestern city of Biberach, farmers against the government’s agricultural policies held vicious and hostile protests. These led to the cancellation of a Green party convent.

The harassment has not ended in more recent times either. In early April 2024, a 27-year-old far-right extremist was indicted for plotting an attack against Green politicians. On May 1, 2024, during an EU election campaign event, protesters cornered Green politician and the Vice President of the German Bundestag, Katrin Göring-Eckardt, and prevented her from leaving the venue. A few days later, a group of passers-by physically assaulted two Green politicians in Essen after a party event. A 66-year-old man punched a Green member of the Lower Saxony state while canvassing on May 24, 2024.

Green party members refuse to run for local elections due to safety fears. Online hate speech directed against Green politicians and supporters is rampant and fueled by conservative media, most notably Germany’s highest-circulating newspaper Bild.

Increased threats against politicians, journalists, academics and activists are a sad reality in a politically polarized Germany. Greens are disproportionately affected. Of the 2,790 politically motivated crimes reported in 2023, 1,219 were aimed at Green politicians. Why are the hostilities of many voters dissatisfied with the traffic light coalition targeted at the Greens in particular?

Reactivating the Greens’ old stigma

In the fall of 2021, the Greens achieved their best-ever federal election result with 14.7% of the vote. Even a year into the legislative period as part of the governing traffic light coalition, the party rode a wave of popularity, polling up to 25%.

These highs invited political rivals to target the Greens. In doing so, they picked up on the tried-and-tested stigma of the so-called “prohibition party” that has tainted the Greens since their foundation in the 1980s. An ostensible example is the Greens’ call for a “Veggie Day” in public canteens in 2013. Despite the Greens being in opposition back then, this minor proposal dominated the national headlines. Politicians from the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) scandalized it as “a building block for the federal Green ban republic” and branded the Greens as a “Bevormundungspartei” (patronizing party).

Today’s campaigns against the Greens strike the same tone. A prominent example is the controversial Buildings Energy Act pushed by the Greens and passed last year. According to the law, oil and gas heating systems must be gradually replaced with heat pumps powered by at least 65% renewable energy. A crisis-weary population and quarrels within the traffic light coalition provided the conservative and far-right opposition with a breeding ground to use the Buildings Energy Act as a lever to reactivate the Greens’ old stigma: Once again, the Green Party allegedly patronized the hard-working population by imposing new and costly heat pumps and ignoring already persisting financial hardship due to stubbornly high energy costs and inflation.

Jumping on the far-right anti-Green bandwagon

The Buildings Energy Act is a new expression of a long-standing culture war unleashed on the Greens. The far-right AfD pinpointed the Greens in particular as their prime target in a strategy paper published before the 2017 federal election: “The AfD does not win votes from the Greens but against them … The AfD should starkly differentiate itself from the Greens and tackle them head-on even more than before. The more it does this, the more support it will find … in all … target groups — and the more it will provoke a backlash from the Greens, which will then benefit the AfD again.”

According to the paper, the Greens embody “everything the AfD rejects: genderism, self-serving environmental lobbies, political correctness and … ‘multiculturalism’.”

This enmity flourished during the 2021 Bundestag election campaign, when Annalena Baerbock, then the Greens’ lead candidate and now Foreign Secretary, was the prime target of misinformation from the far-right.

Seven years later, the AfD garnered up to 23% in nationwide polls in December 2023 and more than 30% in its East German state strongholds. These highs arise from declining trust in democratic institutions, including the parties of the traffic light coalition.

To win back voters from the AfD, the conservative CDU adopted the AfD’s scapegoating of the Greens despite governing with them in five states. Party chairman Friedrich Merz singled the Greens out as the CDU’s “main opponent” (instead of the AfD), accusing them of “educating the people” and blaming them for the “polarization around energy (and) environmental policy in Germany.” The party chairman of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party CSU, Markus Söder, jumped on the anti-Green bandwagon: “The Greens’ worldview doesn’t suit Bavaria,” further adding, “The Greens rely on ideology and ever new bans.”

Even parts of the political left hope to benefit from applying an anti-Green stance. Sarah Wagenknecht, leader of the new and upcoming left-wing conservative party “Bündnis Sarah Wagenknecht” (BSW), vilifies the Greens as the “most incompetent, most hypocritical, most mendacious and … most dangerous party” in the Bundestag and attested to its “infinite arrogance … towards people’s social problems.”

The Greens have become vulnerable on two flanks. Some denounce them as a radical eco-socialist party. Others see them as a bourgeois party that has traded its ecological DNA for the pursuit of power.

Contentious Green policies

Accordingly, criticism of the Greens can be justified twofold. On the one hand, little remains of their ecological-pacifist founding ethos in the 1980s. Arms deliveries to Ukraine, lacking policy support for Palestinians in Gaza, a hasty phasing out of nuclear power while remaining dependent on coal energy and liquid gas, and tightening of migration and asylum policies are evidence of this.

On the other hand, the Greens have lacked modesty in communicating their ambitious climate policy proposals to a working class that fears the costly consequences.

Latest nationwide polls show that support for the Greens has halved from the mid-twenties to only 12% within almost two years. According to another recent survey, 6% of self-proclaimed centrist voters and 26% of voters on the left of the political spectrum intend to vote Green.

Indeed, social cleavages are widening at the expense of the Greens due to perceived impositions in climate and migration policy. Traditional Green voters remain steadfast in their support. They are mostly young, female, educated and reside in affluent constituencies of West German states. Yet, centrist voters unsettled by a perceived overbearing “ecological zeitgeist” are turning their backs on the Greens.

Inordinate criticism of the Greens

One can make the case that the Greens receive disproportionate criticism. Rising verbal abuse and physical threats undergird this case. In 2021, the Greens regained power for the first time in 16 years as part of the traffic light coalition — once again as a junior partner in a coalition led by the Social Democrats. During the same 16-year period, the CDU/CSU and SPD governed for 16 and 12 years respectively. The level of hatred towards the Greens compared to the Christian and Social Democrats is astonishing given the Greens’ comparatively short time in government as a minor coalition party.

This illustrates how conservative and far-right campaigns against the Greens have infiltrated political and social discourse. These campaigns have successfully pitted democratic parties against each other. The hatred of the Greens has manipulated Germany’s main democratic parties into believing that fighting the Greens equates to fighting the roots of discontent and the far-right’s success. The opposite materializes. Far-right narratives spread, democratic consensus erodes and hostilities shift into the democratic center and become entrenched.

The traffic light government and especially the Greens are trying to strike a fine balance between crisis management and structural change. After coming to power in 2021 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, major world-changing events, such as the Ukraine war, new migration movements, an energy crisis and the Gaza war, have occurred. These are duly unfavorable times to initiate a structural change in climate policy. Overdue change from which Merkel shied away from even in economically more propitious times and circumstances.

Who are the real enemies?

With pivotal East German state elections looming this year, the traffic light coalition is standing with its back against the wall. During the 2021 federal elections, the coalition parties gathered 52% of the vote. This figure has now plummeted to 31% in the latest EU election and to 32% in federal election polls. Nationwide protests in January 2024 against the AfD impressively demonstrated the strength of united democratic action against democracy’s adversaries. Prior to the AfD’s strong EU election results, these protests contributed to the AfD’s first significant dent in the polls for a long time, expedited by investigations into Chinese and Russian links of two EU candidates, Maximilian Krah and Peter Bystron.

However, this solidarity on the street must also translate into the political arena. The Greens’ coalition partners, the Social Democrats and the Liberals, are complicit in either buying into anti-Green narratives or in silence. After all, weakened Greens are weakened political competitors. Disproportionate violent hatred against any party, especially a democratic party like the Greens, should stir up fellow democratic parties. The real enemies lurk at the anti-democratic fringes and should be confronted in unity.

[Will Sherriff edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Germany’s Greens Now Targeted by Friend and Foe Alike appeared first on Fair Observer.

Part of Germany’s social beating heart

Germany has over 1.3 million firefighters, a substantial portion of the nation’s 84 million citizens. Of these, over a million are volunteers, along with an additional 270,000 junior firefighters. Germany is unique in this regard; in few other European nations do volunteers provide such a great share of fire protection.

Fire control in Germany would fall apart without the volunteer work of firefighters. Their activities extend beyond providing vital fire safety. Volunteer fire departments are the social beating heart of the nation, driving community life, especially in rural areas. For example, they organize fairs and other recreational events. In Germany, where around 40% of the population older than 14 commits to volunteerism, volunteer fire departments are a nationwide pillar of civic engagement.

Due to their deep-rootedness in German society, zealous conservative actors have cast an eye on volunteer fire departments to penetrate into the center of society. According to the former president of the German Fire Brigades Association, Hartmut Ziebs, 10,000 extremists have infiltrated volunteer fire departments, and a 2021 government report on the threats to the constitution counted as many as 34,000.

A long list of far-right incidents

Inevitably, the list of extremist incidents in volunteer fire departments is long. This year, five firefighters in Leonberg, a town in Germany’s southwest, chanted politically charged slogans over the fire truck’s loudspeakers. Berlin’s fire department discharged a former volunteer after he repeatedly spouted racist slurs at fellow members. In 2021, in the wake of incidents of racism in the volunteer fire department of the northern German city of Bremen, an investigative report by the Bremen Higher Regional Court stated that racial slurs, down to the most extreme “are used at almost every station“ with varying frequency.

Earlier this year, extensive research by the German magazine Stern revealed the magnitude of extremist infiltration in volunteer fire departments. Some firefighters perform the Nazi salute. Some use slurs targeting Middle Eastern people among colleagues. One police station in Cologne has the birthdays of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Eva Braun noted on the calendar. Stern’s research triggered a fierce backlash. The magazine received countless hateful letters and hostile comments on social networks. It proved that criticizing German volunteer fire departments is stirring up a hornet’s nest, hitting a sore spot of the country’s civic soul.

A thriving environment for the far-right

The overwhelming, and partly concerted, backlash is a glimpse into the organizational culture that attracts radical actors to fire departments. A tomboyish and comradely esprit de corps, clear hierarchy structures and authoritarian communication styles are compatible with right-wing extremist views of society. 

Equally enticing to these zealots is the demographic composition of firefighting units. According to the latest Volunteer Survey of 2019, less than 1% of fire department members were of immigrant origin. In light of Germany’s population’s 26% share of people with an immigrant background at the time, this represents a glaring under-representation. Meager ethnic diversity is complemented by a low proportion of women in German fire departments, at just 10.5%.

The unabating dominance of “white heterosexual men from the working class“ in fire departments is by no means a merely unmediated result of external factors; it also stems from an internal skepticism of change. Volunteer fire departments operate largely under the state’s radar, and measures that could help combat the lack of diversity, like complaints offices in the event of racist or sexist incidents, are rare. Hence, volunteer fire departments are fertile ground of influence with little supervision for these radicals.

Strategic advances from the AfD

Unsurprisingly, AfD has zeroed in on volunteer fire departments to gain political power. The strategy seems to have paid off: AfD recently reached a historic peak of 21% in opinion polls, only trailing the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU).

As early as 2017, AfD formulated a strategy as to which lobbying in civic organizations “is important to anchor the AfD in the middle of society and gain access to expert knowledge. … AfD members must also be encouraged to participate in associations or to use their association membership discreetly but consciously for the AfD.“ In another internal strategic paper from 2019, the AfD explicitly classifies volunteer fire departments as nationwide organizations with strong membership bases, regarded as “affiliated to the AfD.“ 

Complementing the strategic personnel infiltration of volunteer fire departments are legislative proposals from AfD intended to portray the party as their only true advocate. The AfD state associations of the eastern German states of Saxony and Thuringia, both electoral strongholds of the party, proposed an increase in firefighters’ pensions: “As a sign of our recognition and gratitude for the fact that the women and men of the volunteer fire department have risked their health and their lives … we demand that the benefits from the fire department pension for those who work on a volunteer basis be increased.“

Not only are AfD’s advances appreciated by some members, but they are also reciprocated by fire departments at regional leadership levels. In September 2020, the Thuringian Fire Brigades Association invited Björn Höcke, the AfD parliamentary group leader in the state parliament of Thuringia, to deliver the welcome address at their annual meeting. Höcke is considered the enfant terrible of AfD and the most prominent representative of the party’s far-right wing. Due to his ultra-nationalistic statements and use of Nazi vocabulary, he has been under surveillance by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution since the beginning of 2020.

Standing up for democracy

In December 2019, Hartmut Ziebs resigned under ominous circumstances as president of the German Fire Brigades Association. Prior to his resignation, he publicly warned that fire departments were being infiltrated by the nationalist views of AfD. Zieb’s warning caused ripples in the departments, prompting both support and outrage. Although numerous members jumped to his side, Zieb received countless hate messages and death threats. His statements sparked a power struggle at the leadership level of the firefighters’ associations. “Intrigues and obstructions to [his] work“ led to his resignation, according to Ziebs: “I did not correctly assess that I might have had one or two people close to me who felt a certain affinity for the AfD.“

Radical infiltration attempts and incidents of racism have been known to German fire departments for decades. The internal diversity and anti-racism campaigns have fallen flat given lackluster public demarcations against the zealots from within, as Ziebs stresses: “I would like to see a sensitivity … for the dangers to our democracy.” He called for “fire department commanders to be assertive and always explicitly stand behind the constitution.”

Moreover, Germany’s government has failed to grasp the mantle and take this danger more seriously. In a parliamentary question in 2021, the leftist party Die Linke enquired as to “what knowledge [the government has] of suspected cases of right-wing extremism among members of volunteer fire departments, professional fire departments, or plant fire departments.“ The government’s response was sobering, stating that, with two exceptions, it did not know of any further incidents.

AfD’s intrusion into volunteer fire departments should warn Germany’s other democratic parties in the Bundestag to pay more attention to civic organizations outside election campaigns. Civic engagement, whether in volunteer fire departments or elsewhere, contributes to a vibrant democracy. Conversely, neglecting civic organizations can turn them into darkrooms of extremist machinations.

History offers Germany’s democratic parties a stark lesson. The infiltration of civic organizations by right-wing extremists was a precursor to the destabilization of Weimar democracy and the rise of totalitarianism.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Germany’s Firefighters Fail to Put Far-Right Infiltration Out appeared first on Fair Observer.

A comprehensive poll on Germany’s involvement in the Ukraine War from the end of June this year showed that solidarity for Ukraine among Germans is steadfast. 42% supported maintaining the West’s military support for Ukraine. 30% called for increased military aid, while 23% preferred to see support scaled back.

Nonetheless, Germany’s political fringes on both the left and right are attempting to disrupt this consensus by stirring fears of nuclear escalation and economic downturn. They latched onto the German government’s decision to deliver heavy weaponry, most notably Leopard 2 battle tanks. Moreover, they have managed to polarize public discourse with calls for peace talks that dictate terms to Ukraine and downplay Russian aggression.

The so-called “Manifesto for Peace” by far-left politician Sahra Wagenknecht and feminist publicist Alice Schwarzer garnered the most attention. It demanded that the government “halt the escalation of arms deliveries and lead a strong alliance for a ceasefire and peace negotiations.” In February, Wagenknecht and Schwarzer spearheaded the “Uprising for Peace” protests in Berlin. Organizers claimed that 50,000 people rallied. Attendees included members of the far-right. The protests were unsettlingly void of symbols of solidarity for Ukraine and made only lackluster attempts to distinguish themselves from right-wing and anti-Ukrainian messaging.

In January this year, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) submitted a motion titled “Peace Initiative” to Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag. The AfD’s honorary chairman, Alexander Gauland, called for peace talks and created doubts about his solidarity with Ukraine. “No one can win this war, and only if we finally accept that and work for a peaceful solution will peace have a chance,” he said.

These calls particularly resonate with voters in East Germany, where historically pro-Russian sentiment persists.

The fringes also attempted to build upon some polls showing that more than half of the population favored more substantial diplomatic efforts to resolve the war.

At first glance, the debates fueled by these initiatives are ubiquitous, drawing in opinions from across the population. Yet there is a major group missing. People with actual experience of war and migration hardly featured in public discourse, especially Syrians exiled from their country to Germany by a civil war that Russia exacerbated.

At the end of 2021, roughly 932,000 people from Syria resided in Germany, an enormous leap from 33,000 Syrians ten years earlier. In spite of this, the influence of Syrians in the debate has been imperceptible, save for at the very beginning. Then, Syrian voices were present in debates about whether Ukrainian refugees were receiving preferential treatment compared to Middle Eastern and North African refugees. German media thus only reduced them to their status as refugees, meaningful only in terms of what they had experienced in Europe — and not what they had experienced in the country of their birth, in terms of war, freedom and peace.

Two young Syrian voices

So, what do Syrians in Germany think of their new home country’s struggle to find its role in the Ukraine war? What do they have to say about the Russian invasion, Germany’s support for Ukraine and the calls of some Germans for peace talks?

I spoke to Montaser Alrasheed, age 29, and Taoufek Morad, age 25. Like many Syrians, they left war-torn Syria for Germany in 2015. Approaching a decade of life in Germany, they no longer see their future in Assad’s Syria and intend to build new lives in their new home country.

Fearing compulsory military service, Morad fled Syria’s so-called capital of the revolution, Homs, which was ravaged and reclaimed by Assad’s Syrian Arab Army in 2014. He has been making the most of his new-found opportunities in Germany. Along with his full-time job as a social worker, he volunteers on an international advisory board in his new hometown of Pforzheim in Germany’s southwest, an organization that gives immigrants without German citizenship a political voice at the municipal level.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022 left Morad speechless. Soon enough, the images of war and destruction — resembling those of his hometown — made him realize that Putin would “do the same thing in Ukraine that he has done and is doing in Syria.” Morad refers to Russia’s military intervention in Syria that started in September 2015 and killed at least 6,928 civilians.

Alrasheed fled to Germany from Ar-Raqqa. This enabled him to continue his studies, which he had to interrupt because of the war. He is now studying civil and environmental engineering in Hanover. The first impressions of the war in Ukraine saddened and surprised him, as he, like so many, did not expect Putin to take such a political risk.

Lessons to learn from Syria’s civil war

Morad and Alrasheed understand why some Germans are speaking out for increased diplomatic efforts. They feel the same horror over recurring gruesome images and the number of victims caused by Russia’s aggression.

Yet Alrasheed opposes peace talks that include territorial concessions from Ukraine. “Occupation should not be a basis for a solution,” he told me. According to Morad, a diplomatic solution entailing a loss of Ukrainian territory should only be considered “if the people of Ukraine think it is right.” Likewise, he sees German arms deliveries as appropriate “as long as the Ukrainians want them.”

The arms deliveries to Ukraine remind Alrasheed of the complicated web of foreign interventions in the Syrian Civil War. He describes Ukraine as “a chessboard” of a proxy war against Russia that serves the various actors’ interests.

Alrasheed complements this sober view on foreign involvement in the Ukrainian war with a stark warning, also drawn from the Syrian Civil War: “If military support to Ukraine wanes, there is a risk of exposing Ukrainian civilians to revenge and despotism similar to Assad’s ruthlessness against his people.” According to Human Rights Watch, the Syrian regime has been found responsible for 85 chemical weapon attacks during the Syrian Civil War. To this day, Assad arbitrarily detains and tortures Syrian citizens.

Both Morad and Alrasheed see Putin’s intervention in the Syrian Civil War, similar to Putin’s wars in Chechnya, Georgia and Crimea, as a blueprint for the invasion of mainland Ukraine. “Syria served as a testing ground for Putin on warfare and how the international community responds to military intervention. The international community, by its silence or lack of consequences, sowed the seeds for the Ukrainian war”, Morad said.

Despite the West’s more unanimous and robust reaction to Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, Alrasheed fears that, like in Syria, “the population of Ukraine could be forgotten as soon as the nations involved no longer see their interests represented” and the political and economic costs for the support turn out to be too high.

Lack of representation and participation

The discourse surrounding the war in Ukraine lacks the valuable opinions and experiences like Alrasheed’s and Morad’s. Since 1950, 2.3 million people have sought refuge in Germany due to flight and displacement, including 1.2 million between 2014 and 2021. In addition, 1.1 million Ukrainians immigrated between March 2022 and May 2023. Germany, as an (albeit reluctant) immigration society with a large share of people who fled their homelands, should do better to represent refugees in political discourses, regardless of their state of citizenship. 

The inadequate representation is merely a symptom of an underlying participation deficit. It shows migrants and refugees are reduced to passive spectators, even when the political debates touch upon their lives. They often find themselves in a political and participatory limbo due to insecure residence statuses or missing citizenship.

Voters increasingly see refugees as a burden on Germany’s social fabric, which is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy when they consign refugees to political invisibility and deny them political participation. The preconceived notion of a belittled refugee who is to be grateful for the shelter received does not allow for dialogue and shared experiences.

Refugees’ opinions could be valuable and authentic additions to virulent polarized discourses. Yet, without German or EU member state citizenship, opportunities for formal political participation are sparse. Municipal advisory boards and similar voluntary and informal participation structures cannot fully compensate for exclusion from political elections. Germany must face the reality of being an immigration society. Progressive steps, such as a municipal voting right for non-EU foreigners, are overdue to make migrants and refugees politically more visible.

[Lane Gibson edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post We Need Syrian Voices in Debates on the Ukraine War appeared first on Fair Observer.

Sunak’s rise and the number of minority candidates who ran for the top job in the previous party leadership race demonstrate a key fact: the Tories are brimming with ethnic diversity. Six of the original eleven candidates, Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman, Rehman Chishti, Sajid Javid, Rishi Sunak, and Nadhim Zawahi, come from ethnic minorities. Such a diverse group of contestants was no fluke. It was the result of targeted approaches, particularly toward South Asians in the UK, and a willingness to propel ethnic minority MPs into ministerial offices.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the center-right party of Germany, does not represent ethnic minorities in the same way as the Tories. The Conservative Party could potentially serve as a model for the CDU.

Merkel’s Cabinets – Ethnic Diversity Missing

A comparison of Boris Johnson’s and Angela Merkel’s cabinets highlights the ethnic diversity gap between the Tories and the CDU. Boris Johnson’s first cabinet, from July to November 2019, was already ethnically more diverse than that of his predecessors. In Johnson’s second and last cabinet, about 25% of cabinet ministers had an ethnic minority background. The percentage of ethnic minorities in the UK is only 14%, making this overrepresentation remarkable.

Merkel’s four cabinets during her 16-year tenure from 2005 to 2021 reveal a contrasting picture. Under Merkel, not a single CDU cabinet minister came from an ethnic minority background. This is striking because ethnic minorities comprise 26% of Germany’s population. While 34% of Tory MPs come from ethnic minorities, the figure is only 4.1% for the CDU.

Neglecting German Turks for Too Long

The rise of ethnic minorities in the Conservative Party has roots in the 1980s. The Tories identified the South Asian community as a target group. Margaret Thatcher’s government was particularly successful in winning over prosperous East African Indians. Her party slowly detached itself from its xenophobic legacy, epitomized most starkly by Enoch Powell’s “Rivers Of Blood” speech.

On the other hand, the CDU failed to make such an appeal to the German Turks, the largest ethnic minority comprising more than 1.2 million voters.  In fact, in 1982, Helmut Kohl’s government tried to lure the immigrant Turks from the 1960s to return to their homeland with an incentive of a return payment. In leaked confidential conversations with none other than Margaret Thatcher, Kohl communicated his ultimately unexecuted intention to reduce “Turks in Germany […] by 50% […] It would be impossible for Germany to assimilate the Turks in their present numbers […] Turks come from a very distinctive culture and would not be easily integrated.”

Furthermore, in the 1990s, Kohl’s so-called “asylum compromise” restricted the possibility of invoking the fundamental right of asylum. Consequently, the CDU lost trust among the German Turks. Added to that, the CDU conducted election campaigns ignoring the German Turks by opposing their demand for dual citizenship.The “C” that stands for Christian in the party name also had a deterrent effect on  many Turks. Meanwhile, some conservative values of German Turks are close to those of the CDU. As migration researcher, Haci-Halil Uslucan told the newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel: “If the CDU does not emphasize the “C” too strongly, it is very close in terms of its attitude to a large part of the population of Turkish origin.“

The CDU eventually recognized German Turks as potential voters and managed to loosen the traditional electoral grip of the Social Democrats (SPD) on German Turks in its favor for the last two federal elections. The SPD’s failure to enforce dual citizenship while in power and the belated expulsion of Thilo Sarrazin, a party member and author who published books with Islamophobic undertones, alienated German Turks from the SPD.

Besides the inadequacies of the SPD, Merkel’s well appreciated refugee policy, which allowed 890,000 asylum seekers to enter Germany in 2015, drew German Turks to the CDU. “I am also the Chancellor of German Turks.”, canvassed Merkel in 2016, reinforcing her commitment to fortify Germany as an immigration society.

No Political Will at the Highest Levels of Power

Merkel’s already belated commitment further fueled the lack of representation of federal cabinet ministers from ethnic minority backgrounds since no further action was taken. 

The CDU has hardly shown any interest in awarding the highest party and executive offices to MPs from ethnic minority backgrounds. Before, during and after Merkel’s tenure, hardly any MP’s from ethnic minority backgrounds were awarded the highest party and executive offices from high-powered intra-party figures of the CDU. 

In contrast, the Tories underpinned their courtship of South Asians through political action at the highest levels of power. In 2015, former prime minister David Cameron resolutely said, “The first black or Asian prime minister will be a conservative”. Under the slogan “2020 Vision“, he pledged to increase the proportion of parliamentary party members with an ethnic minority background by 2020. 

Boris Johnson built upon this vision with his ethnically diverse cabinets, though his underlying motives for these appointments to offices are open to debate. Johnson calls himself a “one-man melting pot” in light of his Turkish and Russian-Jewish family history and his second wife being of Indian origin. However, Priti Patel, Alok Sharma, and Rishi Sunak’s appointments to their ministerial posts could be viewed as rewards for their pro-Brexit stances. The same rationale can be applied to the appointments of Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, and Kwasi Kwarteng into Truss’s “most right-wing cabinet for a generation”, all of whom also voted for Brexit.

In comparison, the CDU has a lack of similar influential political figures willing to promote ethnic minority representation in government offices. During her four terms, Merkel missed a vital opportunity to hire more personnel from ethnic minority backgrounds into the CDU/CSU’s Bundestag parliamentary groups. Instead of seizing this opportunity, she simply failed to concretise her lip service. 

Armin Laschet, Merkel’s direct successor as party leader, could have been a rare facilitator of change and spearheaded a more diverse government. He proved his credentials as the integration minister of Germany’s most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia, calling for more ethnic minority MPs in 2010. He also published a book entitled “The Upstart Republic: Immigration as an Opportunity“ the year before, highlighting his pro-immigration stance. 

After he was elected North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister-President, Laschet set an example by appointing a Turk, Serap Güler, as State Secretary for Integration in 2017. To this date, Güler is considered one of the few prominent German Turks in the CDU who could ascend to the federal party’s highest ranks in the years to come. In an interview with the Turkish newspaper Hürryiet during the Bundestag election campaign in 2021, Laschet displayed his determination to canvas German Turks.

When asked whether there would be a CDU minister with an ethnic minority background under his chancellorship, he replied, “We’ll talk about the cabinet formation after the Bundestag elections. But in fact, [our Bundestag is] not really diverse […]. If a quarter of the population has an immigration biography, but in a parliamentary group, there are only one or two people, that is not representative. […] I would like to see more people with immigration history, including more people of Turkish origin […] in the Bundestag – and the federal government.” Yet, he was defeated by Olaf Scholz after a disastrous election campaign, handing over the party chair to Friedrich Merz after just a year. 

More Ethnic Minority Representation Under Merz?

The successful careers of Rishi Sunak, Kwasi Kwarteng, and Sajid Javid, among others within the party, should serve as a target position for the CDU. The Tories have been accused of mere symbolism as there has been a lack of substantive representation in terms of policies benefiting ethnic minorities. Despite this, the party has continued to recognize that ethnic minority representation within the cabinet has to reflect the UK’s realities of an immigration society and is paramount to winning new electoral majorities. 

The CDU still lags behind the Tories in representing minorities. They have been late in approaching ethnic minority target groups such as the German Turks. The belated avowals of CDU politicians of Germany as a society with a high number of immigrants and the lack of political  will to represent them have led to inadequate representation of minorities as MPs and ministers. It is doubtful if this representative deficit will be rectified under Merz, the present party leader and staunch conservative.
Despite promising to modernize and open up the party to new target groups, Merz has done the opposite. He countered his promise by advocating for more restrictive immigration policies and pronouncing the target of winning back voters from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). This does not bode well for ethnic diversity in the CDU and will ensure that the representative deficit continues.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Who Are Germany’s National Minorities?

Four state-recognized autochthonous national minorities live on German territory: the Danes, Frisians, Sorbs, and the German Sinti and Roma. In accord with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM), five criteria need to be fulfilled to be granted minority protection by the German government: the minorities’ members are German nationals; they have a distinct identity, consisting of an own language, culture, and history; a wish to maintain and preserve that identity; they have settled in Germany for a long time within traditional settlement areas.

As demographic statistics and socioeconomic data based on ethnicity are historically not collected in Germany due to the Nazi past, the numbers of people belonging to the national minorities are estimates. About 50,000 members of the Danish minority live in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, bordering Denmark, and 50,000-60,000 Frisians live along the North Sea coastline between the Netherlands and Denmark. About 60,000 Sorbs, a Slavic minority, live in the Lusatia region, close to the Polish border in East Germany. The minority of the Sinti and Roma provides an exemption from the criteria of residing in a specific settlement area with 70,000 members living all across Germany.

Instrumentalizing National Minorities

The lack of demographic data on national minorities implicates that no figures are available on the number of eligible voters in the respective minority groups. Despite only making up a small proportion of the German electorate, Germany’s far-right AfD has increased efforts to stage themselves as their true advocates. 

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In November 2020, a speech by Beatrix von Storch, deputy chairwoman of the AfD Bundestag faction, laid bare the AfD’s attempt to instrumentalize national minorities to stigmatize other ethnic groups in Germany. Storch deliberately misrepresented the federal government’s pledge to protect national minorities. According to Storch, the fact that national minorities are promised protection based on origin, language, and culture, irrespective of their German citizenship, confirms the AfD’s long-held view that national identity cannot be obtained through the acquisition of German citizenship: “If we state that ethnic groups and national minorities have a cultural identity that should be preserved, then the same applies to national majorities. You can’t claim that national minorities like the Sorbs, Frisians, and Danes have a cultural identity and at the same time declare that the national majority in Germany doesn’t.”

With this statement, Storch argumentatively and tacitly deprives some German citizens with an immigration background of their German identity as she had openly claimed before: “Islam is not part of German tradition and identity, and therefore it does not belong to Germany.” Furthermore, Storch misuses national minorities to spread an ultra-nationalistic ideology harbored by large parts of the AfD, according to which there is a national identity of a people that is deeply rooted.

Misusing the Sorbian Minority for Electoral Success

By spreading its nationalist ideology, the AfD is trying to appeal to the strong sense of home and belonging among many members of Germany’s minorities and capitalize on this electorally. Yet, the election results of the last two federal elections do not indicate that the AfD is succeeding in areas with large populations of national minorities – except in eastern German constituencies and settlement areas of the Sorbs. 

During the 2017 federal election, the AfD managed to muster up 40 percent of the votes in the Sorbian-dominated district of Spree-Neiße in southeastern Brandenburg. Despite significant gains, the party still lagged behind the CDU, traditionally voted for by the mostly Catholic Sorbs. In the subsequent federal election, in 2021, the Sorbian village of Puschwitz hit the headlines when the AfD candidate emerged as the victor. Curiously, in the neighboring Sorbian village of Crostwitz the CDU candidate pipped the AfD’s competitor to first place. Hence, it remains questionable whether these two stand-out successes of the AfD in Sorbian counties and municipalities express a seminal affinity of the Sorbian minority to the AfD, especially since the economically weaker eastern German states have been AfD strongholds anyway.

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On the contrary, the relationship between Sorbs and the AfD was strained before these election results. Sorbs have long experienced right-wing extremist hostilities and attacks, but since 2014, with the beginning of the far-right PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamicisation of the Occident) demonstrations and the rise of the AfD, the extent has significantly increased. According to Heiko Kosel, an MP of the Saxon state parliament for the leftist party Die Linke, “attacks on Sorbs are linked to increased xenophobia in Saxony in recent years.” Bilingual street signs were smeared and even graffitied with swastikas. Another example of the AfD’s contribution to the hostile climate toward Sorbs was its resistance to a socio-cultural community center in the East German city of Bautzen, where many Sorbs live, warning against ongoing “ethnic mixing“.

Against this backdrop, an incident during the 2017 general election stirred up the Sorbian community when the AfD once again instrumentalized minority groups to incite xenophobic attitudes toward other ethnic groups. The bone of contention was an election poster that depicted three women in traditional German, one of them in Sorbian attire, with the caption “Colorful diversity? We have it already!” That was unequivocally condemned by the umbrella organization “Domowina,” representing the interests of Sorbs in Germany: “We reject the use of the Sorbian people to exclude other minorities.”

Overt Racism Against Sinti and Roma

The fact that the AfD’s representation of the interests of national minorities is nothing more than a smokescreen is shown not only by its attempts to play national minorities off against each other but also by its open racism against the national minority of Sinti and Roma. Among Germany’s national minorities the Sinti and Roma occupy a special historic role. During Nazi Germany, they were prosecuted and murdered, resulting in a Genocide of up to 500.000 Sinti and Roma, often referred to as the ”forgotten Holocaust.” To this day, Sinti and Roma face discrimination and structural racism. In 2021, authorities recorded 109 antizigan crimes, the year before 128. Antizigan attitudes and sentiments in the center of German society are prevalent. According to a 2021 study, 29 percent of the population showed antipathy toward Sinti and Roma. To uncover the dark figure of antizigan sentiment and crime, the German government mandated the Independent Commission on Antiziganism (UKA) in 2019, and an anonymous Reporting and Information Center Antiziganism (MIA) started work in July 2022. In March 2022, the government appointed the first commissioner against Antiziganism and for the life of Sinti and Roma in Germany.

Concerning the Sinti and Roma, the AfD has willingly and repeatedly dropped the covers and counteracted its supposed self-image of being the true representative of the interests of all national minorities. The AfD has been a driving force behind picking up on and promoting antizigan racial prejudice. In a 2019 speech in the German Bundestag about measures to combat antiziganism, the AfD MP Markus Frohnmaier referred to Sinti and Roma as “Zigeuner” („Gypsys“), a racial slur that is condemned by the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, the main advocacy group representing the interests of German Sinti and Roma: “‘Gypsies‘ is a foreign term used by the majority society that is overlaid with clichés and rejected by most members of the minority as discriminatory – because the Sinti and Roma have never called themselves that.” Disregarding this terminological clarification of the people concerned, Frohnmaier contested the designation Sinti and Roma as an “art term.”

Evoking Ghosts of the Nazi Past

In June 2018, the Saxon AfD showed no inhibition to evoking the inhumane ghosts of the Nazi past. They did so by submitting a parliamentary request, demanding the collection of demographic data on Sinti and Roma living in Saxony. Part of the requested data was the number of German and foreign Sinti and Roma living in Saxony, including their education status. Particularly startling were the queries about irregularities in the compliance with compulsory education and the number of homeless Sinti and Roma. With these suggestive and disparaging questions, the AfD consciously tapped into the persisting circulating prejudices of educational alienation, homelessness, and criminality among Sinti and Roma. With the feeding of false preconceptions and request for a registration of the Sinti and Roma population, the AfD summoned gruesome memories of the systematic genocidal policy of the Nazis against the Sinti and Roma and the Jews, which had also entailed a registration of respective population groups. Hence, collecting population data based on ethnicity is prohibited in Germany.

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Not only the Sinti and Roma were affected by the AfD snubbing this particular lesson from the past. A few weeks after the request for the data collection on the Sinti and Roma, the AfD in the Saxon state parliament also asked for “reliable data” on the number of Sorbs in Saxony. Given these efforts, Germany’s National Minority Secretariat, which bundles the interests of the four national minorities, reaffirmed that belonging to a minority is the personal decision of each individual, which may not be registered, verified, or disputed by the state.

The national minorities in Germany unite in the same vulnerability and need for protection, although their identities and cultures differ. Be it the pitting national minorities against other ethnic groups in Germany, the abuse of national minorities’ symbols for electoral campaigns, open racist attacks against Sorbs and Sinti and Roma, and the disregard for the Nazi past. All these incidents contribute to exposing the AfD’s duplicity and its specious advances toward national minorities for electoral success at the misfortune of others.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The AfD’s Duplicitous Attempt to Target Germany’s National Minorities appeared first on Fair Observer.

Gravitational Pull to the Right

As of February 2020, across Germany, approximately 90,000 pupils attended the 254 state-recognized Waldorf schools, whose curricula originate in an anthroposophical worldview. According to the Anthroposophical Society, the Waldorf pedagogy system, which was developed by the Austrian spiritualist Rudolf Steiner in the early 20^th century, encourages “ways of recognizing and exploring the supersensible-spiritual world that exists in the sensory-material world. This ‘spiritual science’ sees itself as a new approach to a deeper and more comprehensive knowledge of nature and man.”

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The concept behind Waldorf schools is a “developmentally appropriate, experiential, and academically-rigorous approach to education.” Compared to the pressure to perform in state-run schools, the goal is to strengthen individual responsibility as well as creative, practical and social skills. Another difference lies in self-administration by parents and teachers instead of a “hierarchically organized external control of the state schools.” 

Through close personal ties with teachers, parents can actively influence everyday school life according to their beliefs with fewer interventions of internal school control bodies compared to state schools. Hence, the self-administration model makes independent schools susceptible to infiltration by far-right actors and conspiracy theorists. According to Ansgar Martins, a religious studies scholar at Frankfurt University, this structural weakness is compounded by the “pronounced anthroposophical inclination toward conspiracy theories” of Waldorf schools that stems from Steiner’s original teachings.

Steiner held a developmental, esoteric and essentially racist view of humanity that saw the world divided into superior and inferior races, exemplified by countless discriminatory statements against Jewish and especially black people: “How can a Negro or an utterly barbaric savage become civilized? … The Negro race does not belong in Europe, and it is of course nonsense that it now plays such a large role in Europe.”

These remarks are joined by Steiner’s pseudoscientific conception of the physical and intellectual superiority of the white race, reminiscent of the Nazi-era Volkstum concept according to which humanity reached its developmental endpoint in the white race: “If the blue-eyed and blond-haired people were to die out, people would become increasingly stupid unless they developed a kind of cleverness which is independent of blondness. … The white race is the future race, is the spirit-creating race.”

According to Germany’s Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, these statements “are to be regarded as particularly serious, since they are by no means random products or racist stereotypes caused by the spirit of the times. Rather, they are to be seen as manifestations of a specifically Steinerian esoteric racial science.” In the Stuttgart Declaration of 2007, the Association of Independent Waldorf Schools condemned “any racist or nationalist appropriation of their pedagogy.” Nevertheless, this declaration did little to prevent attracting far-right conspiracy theorists even before the pandemic.

Far-Right Infiltration

In 2013, the managing director of a Waldorf school in the German town of Rendsburg was dismissed because of connections to the far-right Reichsbürger (Citizens of the Reich) movement. He attracted attention by distributing leaflets in the school spouting that “the Federal Republic of Germany … is not a state, but the managing legal advisor of a state simulation [is]. There is no de jure and de facto state of the Federal Republic of Germany.” 

The Reichsbürger is a heterogeneous movement that, referring to the historical German Reich, rejects the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany and its legal system, thus denying legitimacy to democratically elected representatives. A small proportion of the Reichsbürger movement is made up of right-wing extremists, but the anti-state and conspiracy theory tenets of the entire scene facilitate a connection to anti-Semitic narratives that are central to the far-right domain.

At another Waldorf school in the German town of Minden, a teacher taught unchecked for 20 years before his connections to ethno-nationalist right-wing extremist groups became known. Even before Wolf-Dieter Schröppe became a teacher, he maintained contacts with veteran Nazis, including the war criminal Erich Priebke — the man responsible for the massacre of 335 people as a captain in the SS and sentenced to life in prison. It took more than four months before the school terminated Schröppe’s employment contract, partly because some colleagues spoke out in his support.

In 2015, these incidents prompted the Association of Independent Waldorf Schools to publish a brochure conceding that the anthroposophy-based Waldorf pedagogy has a “great attraction” for the right-wing extremist conspiracy theorists, specifically for the Reichsbürger.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, Waldorf anthroposophy again garnered attention. To this day, Steiner’s worldview translates into a greater vaccine skepticism in Germany as a whole and in Waldorf schools in particular due to public acceptance and influence of anthroposophy. Underlying Steiner’s philosophy is the dangerous belief that diseases serve a karmic purpose by stimulating child development and making amends for mistakes in past lives.

Hence, over the last decades, vaccine skepticism has manifested itself in lower vaccination rates in Waldorf schools, resulting in regular measles outbreaks. In this respect, an incident at a school in the city of Freiburg came as no surprise when 117 COVID-19 cases were recorded and more than 50 forged medical certificates were discovered exempting students and teachers from wearing a mask.

At a Waldorf school in the Bavarian town of Landsberg, a father who is both a doctor and a homeopath issued certificates to families of other students to circumvent mandatory mask-wearing, denouncing people who choose to do so as “mask hypochondriacs.” At a demonstration against COVID-19 measures, he showed the indictable Hitler salute that resulted in criminal charges.

The Bavarian Ministry of Education confirms these incidents are not isolated cases. Mask exemption certificates were seven times more likely to be issued at Bavarian Waldorf schools than at state schools. Nevertheless, many Waldorf parents show resolve against COVID-19 deniers and far-right activities. According to the mobile counseling service against right-wing extremism in Bavaria, Waldorf parents “disproportionately often” reported similar incidents at schools during the pandemic.

COVID-19 Denier Schools

To evade resistance at state but also independent schools and shield children from COVID-19 measures, some parents and teachers went a step further, founding their own learning initiatives and so-called supplementary schools. Insights into the network groups behind those supplementary schools reveal political affinities not only with the Reichsbürger but with another the far-right esoteric movement.

In Rosenheim, Bavaria, an elementary and middle school teacher founded a Querdenker (Lateral Thinkers) school to reflect the movement’s pandemic skepticism. More than 50 pupils were taught here by parents and educators, including herbalists, music teachers and shamans. On advertising leaflets, the school falsely claimed to be located on Russian territory so that German law would not be applicable.

The school principal was active in networks spreading far-right esoteric ideas of the Anastasia movement, a decentralized conspiracy group of far-right esotericists and settlers, based on the protagonist of the “Anastasia” fantasy novel series by Russian author Vladimir Megre. According to sociologist Matthias Quent, the novels “transport cultural racism and anti-Semitism. These are ideological patterns that we also know from National Socialism. According to them, modern society is doomed, and people must retreat to the native soil or family estates.”

Connections to the Anastasia movement also existed in the newly founded Bauernhofschule (farm school) in the state of Hesse, which was registered as a supplementary school. Hesse’s school law enables parents to establish schools with scant bureaucratic hurdles as long as they supplement, not replace state curricula. According to the German state of Hesse’s public broadcaster, HR, Telegram chat transcripts revealed that the school operators proclaimed to teach children how to keep animals, grow vegetables and live in harmony with nature. Nevertheless, the chat was inundated with extremist, anti-Semitic views from the Reichsbürger and Anastasia movements.

Even Holocaust denial — a criminal offense in Germany — received indifferent or approving reactions in the chats. The ideological connections of the Bauernhofschule reach as far as the fringes of the QAnon movement, as Martin Laker’s membership in the group suggests. Laker is an active member of the Anastasia movement and runs his own online platform where he spreads QAnon myths.

Underestimating the Problem

Germany’s political establishment has been slow in reacting to the growing problem. While the authorities are taking action against the newly founded supplementary schools, including enforced closures due to a lack of permits, there is still no sign yet of German politicians taking the danger posed by far-right anthroposophists seriously enough.

In January 2021, the Green Party’s national parliamentary group issued a request asking what connections between right-wing extremist opponents of the COVID-19 measures and anthroposophical groups are known to the German government and how it assesses “the potential danger in this regard, given the fact that anthroposophy in Germany maintains a far-reaching network of companies, foundations, and public institutions.” The answer: “The Federal Government has no knowledge of this.” 

This rection is particularly disappointing considering the fight against right-wing extremism has gained political traction in recent years due to record high numbers of politically motivated crimes by right-wing extremists. In 2020, the government published a substantial catalog of measures accompanied by a 100-page final report on combating right-wing extremism and racism the following year. According to the report, programs to prevent extremism in state schools are to be promoted more vigorously but fail to mention the right-wing extremist slant of anthroposophical groups and independent schools.

It remains to be seen whether the new government under the leadership of Angela Merkel’s successor Olaf Scholz will turn its eye to this blind spot. There seems to be no lack of will on the part of Scholz’s fellow party member and the new minister of the interior, Nancy Faeser, who announced at her first public appearance in the new role that “A particular concern of mine will be to combat the greatest threat currently facing our free democratic basic order, right-wing extremism.” 

The threat posed by far-right conspiracy theories and fake news might have only entered the public consciousness with the triumph of social media platforms. But conspiracy theories don’t germinate in a vacuum. Instead, often far-reaching causes are behind their emergence. In Germany, the societal impact of widespread anthroposophic views, promoted in state-approved institutions like the Waldorf schools, is one of the many causes that deserve increased critical, not at least political, attention.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post German Far-Right Conspiracy Theorists Step Up Attempts to Undermine Schools appeared first on Fair Observer.

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Most opted for the convenient and electable option of telling voters what they wanted to hear. In doing so, many made use of a new in-vogue and almost bipartisan mantra that Germany must not see a repeat of what happened in 2015, invoking fear of uncontrolled immigration and a split society that supposedly followed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to grant entry to nearly 900,000 refugees six years ago.

But this framing oversimplifies, decontextualizes and exaggerates the events of that year. Most of all, it denies a shared responsibility for Afghanistan’s current predicament and the human stories behind the German-Afghan migration history that spans four decades.

A History of Afghan Migration

According to the UN Refugee Agency, 147,994 Afghan refugees lived in Germany in 2020, trailing only Pakistan and Iran as the largest receiving countries. At the same time, 1,592 live in the US and 9,351 in the UK. Afghan migration to Germany dates back to the first half of the 20^th century, yet until the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, only 2,000 Afghans lived in Germany.

Historically, immigration to Germany varied vastly relative to the conflict phases in Afghanistan. Following the Soviet invasion in 1979, approximately 3,000 Afghans arrived in Germany each year from 1980 to 1982. The second phase of immigration followed from 1985 onward, when predominantly Afghan communists sought refuge in Germany.

The largest movement of Afghan refugees began with the end of Soviet occupation in 1989 and the start of the Afghan Civil War in 1992. Restrictions and expulsions imposed by the riparian states of Iran and Pakistan forced many Afghans to choose Germany as an alternative migration destination.

With the mujahedeen victory and the rise of the Taliban, migration to Germany increased drastically until the mid-1990s before numbers declined steadily. Since 2010, with the resurgence of the Taliban, the number of Afghan refugees heading toward Germany has rebounded continuously. While 9,115 Afghans initially applied for asylum in 2014, this figure almost quadrupled to 127,012 in 2016.

Since then, the number of Afghan refugees dropped significantly, from 16,423 in 2017 to 9,901 in 2020. The causes for this decrease can be found both on the European and national level, in policies enacted in response to the 2015 refugee crisis. In March 2016, as part of the EU-Turkey Declaration, European Union member states provided financial support for Turkey to take back irregular migrants, mostly from Greece. In the same year, the EU concluded the Joint Way Forward agreement with Afghanistan to ease “the return and readmission of irregular Afghan migrants from the EU to Afghanistan.”

On a national level, German information campaigns attempted to dissipate alleged rumors about lavish living conditions in Germany. Other measures, such as restrictions to family reunifications, might have also had an impact.

A New Phase of Immigration

After the fall of the government of Ashraf Ghani, a new phase of Afghan immigration is likely. Its extent will be subject to political will. Initially, Germany responded quickly to the Taliban takeover by adapting its asylum policies by halting deportations to Afghanistan. That represented a significant shift. Before, in a controversial attempt to appease the German population after support had waned for Merkel’s refugee policy, more Afghans were forced back to their home country as some areas were declared safe. 

But Germany has been timid in its response to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. As of now, fewer than 3,000 Afghans have been evacuated to Germany. It seems that six years later, Merkel’s so-called “open door” approach still casts an overwhelming shadow over German politics and is a strong impetus for the tentative approach toward aiding Afghan refugees today.

The issue of migration has become a hot potato that German politicians were keen to avoid during the election campaign. If addressed, candidates were likely to try to outdo each other in using restrictive immigration rhetoric in an attempt not to alienate voters.

During the election campaign, the chairman of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and candidate for the chancellorship, Armin Laschet, tried to capitalize on an immigration-weary German society by reiterating that 2015 “must not be repeated.” While this phrase failed to inspire a successful campaign, as the election results show, it aptly reflects the public mood: According to a poll published in June, 60% of Germans reject accepting more refugees.

This collective backtracking by Germany’s political class casts an unwarranted bad light on the decisions made in 2015. Essentially, it capitulates to the far right — particularly the Alternative for Germany — in its interpretation of that period. According to journalist Anna Thewalt writing in Der Tagesspiegel, “with a truncated reference to the year, the events of that time are decontextualized and exposed to myth-making.”

Margarete Stokowski, a correspondent for Der Spiegel, calls out the cynicism and the lack of empathy in the shifting political climate against refugees: “2015 was the year in which civil society accomplished much of what politics could not or did not want to. … What must not be repeated is politicians treating fleeing people like nuclear waste they don’t know what to do with.”

To the relief of many German and European politicians, a scenario similar to 2015 is unlikely to materialize. Many Afghans already face barriers and restrictions in Pakistan and Iran, stymieing a journey to Europe. According to Professor Vassilis Tsianos, a sociologist at Kiel University of Applied Sciences, 2015 “will not be repeated in Europe. Afghan refugees simply don’t make it to Europe because the borders are sealed. The border regime that was established during the so-called refugee crisis is working. Afghan refugees are a minority on all main routes to Europe.”

Migration as Misfortune

In light of the human tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan, the rhetoric in German politics that dismisses migration as misfortune is not only lacking empathy, but avoids the responsibility for the country’s 21-year military involvement in a failed Afghanistan mission. German armed forces were part of the 2001 multinational International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mandate and initially helped to secure Kabul after the defeat of the Taliban.

From 2003 onward, German soldiers were largely deployed to the northern region of Kunduz to establish a secure environment and improve infrastructure. This mission came under severe criticism due to a military exercise on September 4, 2009, when a German commander ordered the bombing of two tankers, feared to be stolen by Taliban fighters, resulting in 142 casualties, most of them civilians.

Despite increasing public scrutiny and doubts about the purpose of Germany’s involvement, its armed forces remained in Afghanistan until 2021, participating in Operation Resolute Support to advise and train local armed forces after the ISAF mandate ended in 2014.

Not only does the anti-immigration rhetoric shut its eyes to the military involvement with loss of civilian life, but it also ignores the history of Afghan migration and the human stories behind it. The negative connotation of 2015 demonizes refugees “who came to Germany … started a new life here under difficult circumstances and are now part of society. What are they supposed to think now when they hear this?” asks Anna Thewalt.

Particularly Afghan women, for whom fleeing to Germany was the path to freedom and self-determination, are struggling to reenact the rising anti-migration sentiment. One of them is Adela Yamini, who had fled from Kabul to Germany in 1994 to escape the mujahedeen. She now lives in the state of Hesse, in the Rhine-Main region near Frankfurt, home to a large proportion of Afghans. During her 27 years in Germany, she has thrived and excelled as a teacher in a vocational school and a local party chairwoman for the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

The recent developments in her homeland filled her with great concern and horror, as escape routes that were open to her many years ago are now closed to Afghan women. “I am overjoyed that as a woman I could flee Afghanistan and study and work in Germany. … It is terrible just to think that as a woman you have no way out and are locked up forever and ever. … When I see the pictures and hear from my relatives what they are going through, I am at a loss for words and I can’t find the language to comfort them, to reassure them,” she wrote in an email.

Yamini believes that the German government needs to face up to responsibility in light of its military involvement by supporting Afghan people “who are currently in acute danger to leave the country.” For that, “bureaucratic hurdles must be overcome and people without passports or visas should be taken out of the country.”

As of now, she sees the current German government as avoiding its duty to those who supported its mission in Afghanistan. According to Yamini, by trying not to “scare off voters,” this responsibility is foisted off to a “future government” due to the events of 2015 which were “not discussed appropriately.”

Since 2001, Germany has taken in more refugees from Afghanistan than many other countries that were capable or had a moral obligation to do so. Instead of building on that legacy, Germany is caving into false doom-and-gloom narratives around the events of 2015 that do not correspond with the realities on the ground today. According to Sabrina Zajak, of the German Institute for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), “Germany would be much better prepared today to receive refugees — both at the level of civil society and in terms of improved accommodation capacities as well as integration measures.”

One pretext against further immigration is that Afghans find integration particularly hard. This is not reflected in reality as high employment rates of Afghan refugees in Germany exemplify. That is even more remarkable in light of government measures that had an inhibiting effect on the integration of Afghan refugees. According to Ramona Rischke, also of DeZIM, “German integration policy … has disadvantaged Afghan refugees for years in their access to integration-promoting measures because as a group they have not had so-called ‘good prospects of staying’ in recent years.”

As soon as the obstacles are lifted, Afghans prove their willingness to integrate into German society. When refugees were allowed to complete shortened apprenticeships in understaffed professions in 2020, it was mostly Afghans who seized the opportunity. Already in 2016, statistics from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees showed that Afghans in particular, who are often young and low-skilled, are seeking to complete school education and vocational training.

New Government, Same Inhibition

Following the results of the recent election, the end of the Merkel era is imminent. That era will not only be associated with the courageous decisions of 2015 but also the hasty, scowling renunciation of those policies. There won’t be another policy shift in the foreseeable future, even with the upcoming change of government.

That was indicated by Olaf Scholz, of the SPD, who is likely to take over the chancellorship by forming a coalition with the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats. During an election campaign appearance, he pledged support for Afghan refugees — as long as this takes place as far away from Germany’s front door as possible: “This time we will have to make sure that those who are also seeking protection in neighboring countries are not left alone, as was often the case in the past. Instead, we have to do everything in our power to ensure that there are prospects for integration, that they can stay there, that they can have a secure future there.”

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With this statement, Scholz conceded that an affirmative discourse on migration to Germany is a hornet’s nest. For the time being, Germany is preoccupied with its own problems. By describing the events of 2015 as catastrophic for the country, portraying migration as bad fortune and disparaging successful integration, Germany’s political class has succumbed to the narratives of the far right. As a result, this retoric has fed and reinforced the public’s negative attitudes toward migration. Meanwhile, the suffering in Afghanistan, particularly among its women, slips from public view.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Germany Lacks Political Courage to Welcome More Afghan Refugees appeared first on Fair Observer.

In July, for the second time now, a group of around a hundred protesters had gathered on the square right in front of the pharmacy to demonstrate “Against Racism and Colonial Language.” They had followed a call by the United Colors Of Change initiative to voice their disapproval at the name, Hof-Apotheke Zum Mohren — Court Pharmacy at the Moor’s.

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This particular pharmacy is representative of more than a hundred with the word “Mohren” in their name across the country. They are at the center of the heated and unrelenting debate around systemic and structural racism, and the question of how to deal with Germany’s colonial past. It isn’t just pharmacies that bear this particular designation; it also appears in names of streets, restaurants, food and drinks.

Interpretational Sovereignty

The German word “Mohr” derives both from the Greek “Moros,” meaning foolish but also stupid, and from the Latin term “Maurus,” meaning black and dark, which the Romans used to describe the inhabitants of the empire’s province of Mauritania.

For critics like the protesters in Friedberg, the use of this term not only represents the use of language with colonialist connotations; they regard it as an expression of underlying, structural racism that legitimizes and perpetuates historically established balances of power and inequalities in the present.

Calling for a change of name, their purpose is to overturn racist inequalities inherent in the German language. Yet first and foremost, they plead for an awareness that recognizes the power of language in the first place because “language creates reality and serves to establish and maintain social relations and systems and is the most important medium in people’s interactions with one another.” 

In this dispute over etymological sovereignty of interpretation, numerous renowned experts jumped to the protesters’ defense. According to Susan Arndt, professor of English and Anglophone literature at Bayreuth University, the racist provenance of the M-word resembles the N-word. Both are often used synonymously and influenced by the idea “that people can be divided by race [and] skin color or … that there are supposedly two races that have mixed.”

Anatol Stefanowitsch, professor at the Institute of English Language and Literature at the Free University Berlin, considers the term a problematic foreign designation since Africans never called themselves that way. It stems from a time “in which there was — to put it kindly — a great ignorance as far as the various tribes in Africa are concerned.”

Only a handful of the affected pharmacies in Germany reacted to the criticism by changing their names. The Hof-Apotheke Zum Mohren in Friedberg is not one of them. The owner of the pharmacy refers back to an alternative interpretation of the use of the term “Mohren” as a tribute to the Moors, who brought modern, advanced pharmacology from the Middle East to Europe.

Helmut Glück, a former professor of linguistics at Bamberg University, is one of the few linguists to undergird this positive interpretation. According to Glück, the presumptions held by other linguists and the demonstrators are “based on ignorance of the linguistic and cultural-historical background.” He warns against an alleged Jacobean terror of virtue: “Moor is an old word. It is not used today to insult black people.” Yet a denial that the word is an “expression of coloniality” and has always been used as a foreign designation is nowhere to be found.

As to the dispute over the name of the Friedberg pharmacy, positions are more entrenched than ever and neither side is ready to give in. Debate and the sentiments around this particular Apotheke can serve as a blueprint for popular opinion in the whole country. Indeed, the owner’s refusal to change the name “for traditional and emotional reasons“ has broad support among Friedberg’s citizens. More than 25,700 have signed a petition launched in 2018 to oppose the renaming. A countervailing petition advocating the renaming of the pharmacy only counts about 1,200 signatures to date.

Ignoring Colonial History

Protesters, however, consider a mere reference to tradition insufficient. Their aim is to shift the public perceptions of people and minorities affected by racism. It also is an act of solidarity with those suffering from systemic racism who shy away from exposing themselves and their experiences of racism for fear of being subjected to more abuse and prejudice.

These fears are not unfounded. The hatred that these protesters face casts a light on the smoldering xenophobia in Germany. According to Ousman Conteh, the organizer of the demonstrations, abuse and obscene gestures from passers-by are a regular occurrence. 

What’s in a Name? Rebranding Racist Legacies

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Comments in the anonymous space of the internet surpass real-life incidents, he told apotheke adhoc: “From hatred to incitement of the people … everything was there.” In an email, he recalls very personal, racist slurs directed at him. One of these comments that “stuck in his mind” read: “If we are talking about changing his name, maybe he should start with himself. He bears the name of an entire terrorist group — Osman.”

This was not only a strikingly offensive but also a blatantly incorrect statement that underlines the emotionally charged atmosphere surrounding the debate. This atmosphere was stoked and exploited by far-right politicians: “Even an AfD [Alternative for Germany] member of parliament commented that we should go back to Africa,” Conteh added.

Resistance to change the names of companies, institutions or products and recognizing structural racism is hardly unique to Germany. Nevertheless, the use of language is both a reflection of a society’s values and of how it deals with history. Indeed, in English-speaking countries, Germany is often regarded as a positive example of how to approach a difficult past, especially when it comes to the Third Reich. Nevertheless, this positive assessment of coming to terms with national socialism should be seen against the backdrop of a half-hearted denazification. 

Colonial history before the Nazi era in Germany has largely been ignored. For example, 117 years had to pass before Germany officially recognized the 1904 genocide of the Herero and Nama people in what was then German South West Africa, now Namibia. Restitution of looted art is proceeding hesitantly. There is no central memorial for the victims of German colonialism.

The lack of urgency and sensitivity toward Germany’s colonial past is also aided by the fact that the German colonial era is not addressed at all, or only sparsely, in school history curricula. Alice Hasters, a 32-year-old journalist and author of the much-discussed book, “What White People Don’t Want to Hear About Racism But Should Know Anyway,” told Deutschlandfunk that during her school years, terms such as “colonial times” and “race theory” were hardly mentioned.

In her opinion, this hasn’t improved up to date: “In the meantime, I’ve been back to a few schools and I don’t have the feeling that so much has changed … The curriculum is based on a white German standard. Anything that deviates from that is ignored.”

Attention Shift

Nevertheless, there are encouraging signs of change. Protests and public denunciations of racist names of colonial origin are just one indication of this. As it seems, they might have propelled Germany’s political parties to start addressing the country’s colonial legacy. The program of the coalition government led by Angela Merkel states: “No future without remembrance — the basic democratic consensus in Germany includes coming to terms with the Nazi reign of terror and the SED dictatorship, as well as Germany’s colonial history.“ 

A closer look at the election programs of Germany’s six main parties, days away from the general election on September 26, shows the increasing importance of the issue. Compared to the election programs for the 2017 general election, the word “colonialism” is mentioned more frequently, advocating a postcolonial culture of remembrance. The Social Democrats went from one mention of colonialism in 2017 to five mentions in 2021, the Greens from zero to 18, the Left party from four to 14, and the Christian Democratic Union from zero to a modest one.

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While the Liberal Democrats fail to mention colonialism both in 2017 and 2021, the far-right AfD is the only party to take an opposing stance. While it did not thematize colonialism in its 2017 election program, its 2021 manifesto states: “The debate about an allegedly necessary ‘decolonization’ of our culture, which goes hand in hand with a demonization of the ‘white man,’ calls into question the self-image of our cultural identity as a whole. The AfD is the only political force opposing this dismantling of our historical-cultural identity.”

Yet there is still disagreement among those who want to achieve greater sensitivity about the path and strategy for publicly addressing systemic, structural racism. Leila Slimani, a French-Moroccan journalist and author who writes about the conflict between France and the protectorate of Morocco in her most recent novel, “The Country of Others,” urges a preoccupation with the colonial past. She argues against removing monuments and erasing traces of colonial history: “We have to preserve the traces, otherwise we won’t be able to make our children understand this later.”

Nevertheless, traces such as the “Mohren” pharmacies have always been there in Germany, and debates about structural racism and colonialism only arose due to demands for the name change. At the same time, it seems fair to question whether equating words with monuments underestimates the real power of language. Victor Klemperer, a literary scholar of Jewish origin, wrote in a 1947 treatise on the language of the Third Reich: “Words can be like tiny arsenic doses. They are swallowed unnoticed, they seem to have no effect, and yet after some time, the poisonous effect is there.” 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post German Pharmacies at the Heart of an Anti-Racism Debate appeared first on Fair Observer.

Germany’s Greens Are Within Earshot of Power

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In May, polls showed that 43% of the German population perceived Baerbock as a suitable successor for Merkel, leading over her two main contenders; at the end of August, this figure was down to 22%. Targeted online campaigns have been busy exploiting Baerbock’s missteps and stoking fears of political change among voters. These attacks have laid bare how modern political campaigns in the age of social media flush sexist attitudes that persist in both politics and the wider society to the surface. 

Belittled and Patronized

Before Merkel rose to become one of the world’s most powerful female politicians, she was underestimated and belittled throughout the 1990s as a woman from East Germany by a male-dominated West German political class. Despite prevailing in intra-party struggles by often adapting to male behavior, she still had to face gender-based headwinds during her first general election campaign in 2005 as the front runner of her party.

The Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) began the campaign polling at 48%, only to plummet to a sobering 35.2% on election day, securing a knife-edge victory over the incumbent, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Even back then, when social media was still a negligible factor, Merkel had to face partly overt, partly subliminal gender-discriminatory reporting. German media dissected Merkel’s outward appearance, starting with the corners of her mouth and her hairstyle and ending with her now-famous pantsuits.

According to Rita Süssmuth, president of the German Bundestag from 1988 to 1998, at times, “there was more discussion about hairstyle, outer appearance, facial expression, hands, etc. than there was debate about the content. And how often did the question come up: Can the girl do it?”

Her competence was called into doubt, as stereotypical headlines from the time show: “Angela Merkel — an angel of understanding kindness,” “A power woman … corpses pave her way.” In 2004, the Austrian newspaper Die Presse came to the following conclusion to the question of why Merkel had to face such inappropriate media scrutiny: “Because she is a woman and comes from the East. And that is not the stuff of political fantasies that make West German men’s clubs ecstatic.”

Even Merkel’s nickname, “Mutti” (mommy), used affectionately by most Germans now, was originally a derisive epithet. The slow reinterpretation of this nickname is emblematic of how difficult it is for women in politics to break away from antiquated role models.

Since then, Merkel has emerged victorious in four consecutive elections, at the moment the country’s second-longest serving chancellor after Helmut Kohl. She is one of the countless global role models who have proven women to be apt leaders. In light of this overwhelming evidence of women’s political prowess, the levels of sexism and disinformation launched against Baerbock are astonishing. 

Targeted From Day One

When the Green Party chose Baerbock as its front runner in April, it did so with confidence that after 16 years of Angela Merkel, voters had shed their misgivings about aspiring female politicians. If anything, the Greens expected a young, energetic woman to embody political change and provide an appealing contrast to the stodgy, veteran, male candidates like Armin Laschet of the CDU and Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). But soon after the announcement of her candidacy, voices emerged online questioning whether a mother of two would be suitable for the chancellorship. However, it’s not just her status as a mother that made Baerbock an ideal target, especially for conservatives and far-right populists on the internet: Unlike Merkel, she is young, politically more inexperienced, liberal and green.

Adding to that, Baerbock exposed herself to criticism by making unforced mistakes. False statements in her CV, delayed declarations of supplementary income and alleged plagiarism in her book published in June provided further ammunition to her adversaries. Her book’s title, “Now. How We Renew Our Country,” and the criticism she faces mirror the Greens’ current dilemma. Before Baerbock could even communicate a new, innovative policy approach with climate protection at its center to the voters, public attention had already diverted to her shortcomings.

While part of the blame rests with Baerbock herself, a lack of proportionality of criticisms toward her as opposed to other contestants in this election is apparent. For more than a year now, accusations loom around her contender for the post of chancellor, Olaf Scholz. As finance minister and chairman of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, he is accused of failing to prevent the biggest accounting scandal in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany surrounding Wirecard AG, a payment processor and financial services provider. Luckily for Scholz, still-unanswered questions concerning the scandal receive scarce media attention, partly due to the complexity of the issue at hand making it harder to distill into bite-size news. 

Armin Laschet, the CDU‘s candidate for chancellorship and minister president of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, had to navigate rough waters during the COVID-19 crisis. The state government used opaque procedures to award a contract for protective gowns worth €38.5 million ($45.6 million) to the luxury fashion manufacturer van Laack, a company linked to Laschet’s son. Laschet also received criticism for a good-humored appearance during a visit to areas affected by floods that killed at least 189 in July. In addition, he too was accused of plagiarism due to suspicious passages in a book published in 2009.

Even though Scholz’s, and especially Laschet’s missteps have not gone unnoticed by the media, the public and political opponents, Lothar Probst, a researcher at the University of Bremen, recognizes a systematic character in the criticism faced by Baerbock. In an interview with the German Press Agency, he surmised: “Her credibility, respectability, and authority are undermined, she is portrayed as sloppy. … A young, urban smart woman [is] once again tackled harder than her competitors.”

Even before Baerbock’s gaffes were in the spotlight, she found herself in the firing line. Conspiracy theories surfaced, suggesting that Baerbock was a puppet of George Soros and an advocate of the “great reset” conspiracy. Disinformation about Baerbock was also gender-based. Collages of sexualized images quickly circulated, including deepfake photographs disseminated via the messenger Telegram.

Such disinformation originated significantly from far-right circles. In 2019, according to the federal criminal police office, 77% of registered hate posts were attributable to the center-right and far-right political spectrum. According to political scientist Uwe Jun, from Trier University, female politicians from green parties are primary targets for right-wing attacks and disinformation because topics such as climate protection and emancipation inflame passions and mobilize the political right.

Worldwide Concern

Baerbock’s political opponents and critics deny disproportionate criticism, insisting that she should have known what she had signed up for; after all, election campaigns are not for the faint-hearted, especially when entering the race as the front-runner. Yet statistics prove that in Germany, hatred toward female politicians is an everyday occurrence. A survey by Report München showed that 87% of the female politicians interviewed encountered hate and threats on an almost daily basis; 57% of these were sexist attacks.

These results are in line with international studies. In a 2019 report “#ShePersisted. Women, Politics & Power in the New Media World,” conducted by Lucina di Meco and Kristina Wilfore, 88 global female leaders were interviewed, most of whom were “concerned about the pervasiveness of gender-based abuse.” The study concluded that “A new wave of authoritarian leaders and illiberal actors around the world use gendered disinformation and online abuse to push back against the progress made on women’s and minority rights.”

A recent study from January, “Malign Creativity: How Gender, Sex, and Lies are Weaponized Against Women Online,” by the Woodrow Wilson International Center, also shows that 12 of the 13 surveyed female politicians suffered gendered abuse online. Nine of them were at the receiving end of gendered disinformation, containing racist, transphobic and sexual narratives, with the latter being the most common.

Sixteen years have passed between Angela Merkel‘s and Annalena Baerbock’s first campaigns for the chancellorship. Today, women striving for power still have to deal with mistrust and gender-discriminatory prejudice. Merkel had to hold her own in a male-dominated environment where she was underestimated and often treated disparagingly. But compared to Merkel, the campaign against Baerbock has reached a new, unprecedented dimension. Merkel, who is childless, outwardly inconspicuous and politically more conservative, offered less of a target to conservative, male adversaries than the young, modern and progressive Baerbock.

Besides, Baerbock’s opponents in 2021 have more effective tools for spreading gendered disinformation on social media. While disinformation targets both male and female politicians, women are more affected. It aims to undermine women’s credibility and their chances of electoral success and discourage future generations of women from pursuing political careers. Germany’s female politicians must keep in mind that such disinformation is spread by distorted, unrepresentative groups that don’t reflect the social progress made over the years.

At this particular moment, it appears unlikely that Baerbock will move into the chancellor’s office as Merkel did in 2005 by the narrowest of margins. Yet the race is far from over, with nearly a month until election day. Baerbock’s recent performance in the first of three TV debates proves that she is not ready to abandon the field to (online) campaigners spreading gender-based prejudice and disinformation. Despite polls declaring Scholz as the debate’s winner, narrowly ahead of Baerbock, she presented herself as a modern and socioecological alternative to both her contenders and reverted attention to policy away from her persona and gender.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post From Merkel to Baerbock: Female Politicians Still Face Sexism in Germany appeared first on Fair Observer.

During the war, soon to enter its second decade, women were able to break into male-dominated professions — a development well known from other conflicts. However, this progress did not stem from social emancipation but rather due to the dwindling numbers of working-age men as a result of death, imprisonment, displacement and flight. Women’s new responsibilities came with multiple burdens of unequal pay coupled with housework, parenting and increased domestic violence as some men struggled to come to terms with their wives’ new roles.

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A 2017 survey among women living in Syria and abroad identified that 81% thought that the social norms in Syria “truly impede women’s success.” Indeed, many Syrian women living in other countries experience new social conditions that allow them to break free from traditional gender roles. 

Newfound Freedom

Since 2014, Syrians have been the largest group of asylum seekers in Germany. As of December 2019, about 790,000 had fled to Germany, starting in 2010, and the proportion of women among Syrians seeking protection has increased over the years. Many refugee women from Muslim-majority countries have little or no work experience. In numerous cases, they take their first steps to pursue a career in the country where they settle, with nearly 80% of female refugees expressing a desire to be gainfully employed.

A similar picture applies to Syrian women in Germany. According to a survey, 60% of them “definitely” want to work, and 25% are tending toward doing so, yet only 40% have any work experience. Most Syrian female refugees in Germany belonged to the upper social classes back home. They are well educated and already harbored values closer to those of their new home country. Hence, many of them are more inclined to embrace new freedoms and opportunities.

While the issues facing Syrian refugees may be underrepresented in German media, some have shared their experiences. Mai Zehna, who fled to Germany at the end of 2012 from Syria, where she already worked as an art teacher, told Deutschlandfunk Kultur: “I grew up in an open family and was raised the same way as my brother. … Where I was born and raised … women look European. Of course, there are women with headscarves, but many are also unveiled.” Yet according to Zehna, women’s rights in Syria were a far cry from what she is now experiencing in Germany: “The laws in Syria don’t support women. There are written laws, but in reality … society looks at men and women differently. There is more support and freedom here than in Syria.”

Ghada, a 44-year-old from Aleppo, lived a very different life. She fled to Germany to escape her strictly religious family and husband, leaving two of her three children behind: “Women’s rights are suppressed in Syria. … I’ve had enough of it. … In Syria, I was forced to wear a headscarf and a long black coat. … Here in Germany, I have more freedom. I am far away from the oppression.”

Relationships at Risk

Unlike Ghada, who deliberately left her husband behind, many Syrian women have chosen to divorce their husbands in Germany, putting an end to their traditionally preordained roles as housewives. In Syria, women are legally allowed to file for divorce, albeit with more restrictions than men. But besides this discriminatory legal setup, they face pressure and intimidation from their families, neighbors and friends. Character assassination, social exclusion and slander are just some of the repercussions for divorced women who are still condemned by most segments of society.

Najat Abokal, a family attorney in Berlin, noticed an above-average proportion of Syrian women coming to her office and filing for divorce within the first year after the peak of refugee arrivals in 2015. As Abokal told the Frankfurter Allgemeine, divorce was the only option for many women to escape domestic violence and begin an independent life. The divorces were often preceded by a period of separation before being reunited with their husbands who had stayed behind in Syria.

During this period, women learned to make decisions that they would have previously left up to their husbands. The unforeseen, long separation has helped many women develop self-confidence and awareness of their new rights. Social psychologist Bita Behravan, from the University of Duisburg-Essen, notes that women’s respective socio-economic backgrounds are secondary in terms of how they take in their new life in Germany. Women who lived in both modern and traditional roles in their countries of origin cannot help but notice their higher status in Germany.

Hence, the process of integration for Syrian women is an entirely different experience to that of men. Women can see the new values and norms as an opportunity. Men, on the other hand, might perceive it as a fall from grace. From the day they are born, they are used to being taken care of by women. Conversely, they traditionally play the role of providers. After arriving in Germany and reuniting with their wives, these men have to cope with the fact that they are not allowed to take up work instantly, that their salaries are not enough to support the family and that their wife’s second income is required to make ends meet.

Besides, they often depend on their wives’ better German skills in daily life. This initial feeling of helplessness and discontent considering the intra-familial role reversal puts an immediate, and sometimes insurmountable, strain on marriages.

Worth It

Single Syrian women in Germany face similar fears of judgment as those trying to escape their marriages. In Syria, relationships outside of wedlock remain taboo — at least publicly. Underneath the surface of religious rules, premarital sexual relationships certainly exist, particularly in late adolescence and early adulthood. However, they remain an unspoken secret and are hushed up in the family and the public sphere. This spiral of silence does not vanish into thin air as soon as Syrian women cross the border into Germany. Even if they intend to leave behind the dominance of family and religious rules in favor of a liberal approach to love and sexuality, the fear of condemnation from their families or tainting the family honor looms large.

Speaking to Deutsche Welle, 24-year-old Syrian student Hana opened up about the different approach in her new home country: “Here in Germany … people don’t look into your personal life and they don’t require a certificate of marriage for a couple to live together. I feel more freedom and confidence to make my own decisions.” Nonetheless, she decided against telling her family that she now lives with her boyfriend.

In addition to fearing condemnation at home, women who embrace a more Western lifestyle worry about the judgment of men who have sought refuge in Germany but have retained patriarchal social attitudes. “Many immigrants come from patriarchal cultural contexts in which male dominance and female subordination are considered normal,” says Susanne Schröter, director of the Global Islam Research Center in Frankfurt. Young refugee men often lose their former dominant role. Hence, some tend to revert to patriarchal practices of their homelands “to prevent these unruly women and girls from gaining freedom through violence.”

Very few women manage to resist this pressure and the weight of religious traditions and expectations. Yet despite these obstacles, many Syrian women in Germany have caught the independence bug. Through prior experiences, they have learned that winning their freedom and shaping their own lives requires strength and effort. Having endured oppression in Syria and taken on the dangerous journey to their new homes, those remaining risks seem worth taking. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Syrian Women Find a New Life in Germany appeared first on Fair Observer.

Angela Merkel: A Retrospective

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This opportunistic strategy, with the retention of power as the main objective, was devoid of a vision and an ideological foundation. The German magazine Der Freitag put it succinctly back in 2012: “She is pragmatic and non-ideological — like many Germans. Only what the Chancellor stands for, no one knows.”

Merkel’s reserved and pragmatic governing style hardly left room for symbolism. One of the few symbols associated with her was the famous diamond hand gesture, known as the “Merkel rhombus.” During the refugee crisis, Merkel abruptly left her trodden path of asymmetric demobilization. The symbolism and emotional outbursts caused by her course of action and its consequences astounded not only the German public, but it might have surprised the chancellor herself. 

Driven by Deep Conviction

At the height of the crisis, her deliberative rhetoric yielded to impassioned pleas for a liberal, open-minded Germany. Merkel’s most famous but polarizing catchphrase, “We can do this,” rallied Germans behind the “decision of her lifetime” to grant entry to hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants. Wearing her heart on her sleeve, Merkel responded to critics in September 2015, saying, “If we now have to apologize for showing a friendly face in emergency situations, then this is not my country.” 

Sigmar Gabriel, a former leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the federal minister for economic affairs and energy at the time of the crisis, recalls Merkel’s conviction-driven view on the refugee influx. While debating the potential closure of German borders, Merkel replied, “But promise me one thing, Mr. Gabriel, we won’t build fences.” Looking back, Gabriel reflects, “I can still see her shaking her head … I remember thinking, this is not a superficial position, it was deep inside her.” Merkel had grown up during the Cold War in East Germany and had considered fleeing a dictatorial regime and repression herself.

For that rare occasion, Merkel granted a glimpse into her convictions and let emotion visibly influence her actions. Unsurprisingly, this led to a reciprocation in emotional reactions. Not only did it expose her to hate from the (far) right that blossomed due to her decision, but it also resulted in symbolic affection — the likes she had rarely received before. Refugees in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, with their sights set on their final destination, chanted, “Germany! Germany!” Others posted love letters on social media after the news broke that Germany would temporarily suspend the European Union’s Dublin Regulation, which “states that asylum seekers must have their applications processed in the EU country in which they first arrive.” A selfie between Syrian refugee Anas Modamani and Merkel went viral.

Mother Merkel and the Asylum Row

More than five years later, Merkel’s tenure as chancellor is drawing to a close this fall as German voters head to the polls. In October 2018, most refugees in Germany met the news of her resignation as party leader and decision not to stand in the next election with disappointment and gratitude.

Aras Bacho arrived in Germany from Syria in August 2015 and expressed his thoughts on her retirement from politics in passionate and sentimental — hence not typically German — terms. In an article on Vice, he wrote: “I am very sad about Merkel’s decision. The woman who gave me hope and future wants to leave? This is unimaginable, and I think other candidates for the chancellorship are unqualified. I hope that I will get up tomorrow and that it was all just a dream. For me, Germany without Merkel is like bread without butter.” He added that for refugees, “she is like a mother who looks after her children. Many refugees, including myself, have found a great love in Merkel.” 

Bacho also touched upon concerns about a future in Germany without Merkel, who, according to him, acted “like a shield” in an increasingly polarized society. “Another chancellor would never have sacrificed herself for people who fled the war. She sacrificed her future for us, for which Merkel is hated … by a minority that is against us,” he said.

If Merkel was a shield for refugees, that shield started to crack during her time in office. Soon after her controversial decision to open Germany’s borders, public support for her migration policies dwindled. As a result, the government sped up deportations of migrants who had little chance of being recognized as refugees in Germany. Yet this wasn’t enough for the Christian Social Union (CSU), the sister party of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

During the infamous “asylum row” in 2018, the CSU’s party leader, Horst Seehofer, demanded an even tougher stance on migration by turning back asylum seekers at the German border. A rebellion was on hand with the government and chancellor’s future on the line. A bruised Angela Merkel survived the onslaught but had to surrender large parts of her liberal approach to migration in an attempt to cling to power. As intra-party and public opinion turned against her, Merkel also refrained from her buoyant catchphrase, “We can do it!” Instead, she appeased skeptical supporters during the general election campaign in 2017 by saying, “A year like that cannot and should not ever happen again.”

Refugees Now Live in a Split German Society

Merkel changed the societal face of Germany by allowing an influx of 890,000 refugees and migrants in 2015 alone. By setting aside her usual cautious style of the politics of consensus and power retention, she exposed herself to two opposing sentiments.

On the one hand, the adulation that refugees had for Merkel seems unrelenting. They have settled in Germany, leaving behind political turmoil in their home countries after often arduous journeys. Statistics show steady progress regarding their integration into German society. About 50% of refugees who fled to Germany since 2015 have found a job. Now, most live in their own apartments. In schools, children and young people from refugee families usually integrate well. According to a study by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, conducted annually since 2016, refugees are almost as happy with life as Germans themselves.

On the other hand, Merkel left behind a split society in which the once predominant “climate of welcome” has subsided. A majority of Germans now reject her refugee policies. Refugees and migrants often have to bear the wrath directed against Merkel and her policies. The crisis and its consequences have led to increased radical-right violence against refugees and the radicalization of right-wing extremist groups. As a result, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) established itself as a far-right party, serving as a mouthpiece for the radical right.

The refugee crisis has thrown German society out of balance, bringing to the surface hidden feelings of injustice and loss of trust in democratic institutions. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these feelings. Reminiscent of the Capitol Hill insurrection in Washington on January 6, a group of right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists attempted to storm the German parliament in August 2020. Similar to the US, German democracy has edged closer to a tipping point.

That poses a particular danger to the vulnerable group of refugees. Their fears of having to endure the same instability they had fled are rising. Angela Merkel’s unprecedented handling of the refugee crisis might be justifiably disputable, but protecting refugees by taking a firm stand against extremism should not.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Germany’s Refugees Face a Future Without Angela Merkel appeared first on Fair Observer.

The Green Party hasn’t been part of a national government for 16 years now, but it is eager to pick up the reins again. Increased public approval is fueling its craving for power. For about two years now, the Greens’ poll numbers have been hovering around the 20% mark. Compared to the party’s best federal election result yet, 10,7% in 2009, approval has almost doubled. At the pinnacle, in June 2019, some polling agencies projected 27% support for the Greens, pushing the party to the top spot, 3% ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU).

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With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, these approval ratings dipped temporarily as the ruling parties attracted most public attention while applying rigorous measures to combat the virus. Nonetheless, during the last couple of months, the Greens have recovered. The party is a force to be reckoned with during the upcoming September general election. What has prompted these skyrocketing poll numbers?

Rising Stars

In January 2018, two fresh faces entered the national political arena. Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck became joint party leaders for the Greens and have since become rising stars.

Robert Habeck holds a doctorate in philosophy and is the former deputy head of state and environment minister for the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein. With his trademark hairdo, three-day stubble and casual clothing, Habeck knows how to stage a good photo opportunity. One of the images that has gone viral on social media is of him ironing his shirt on the wooden floor shortly before attending a party conference. Despite facing ridicule by many, Habeck is apt at setting himself apart from politicians regarded as old school and out of step with young voters.

Annalena Baerbock, who is a member of the Bundestag, is also no stranger to self-promotion. Her lively personality and vigor contribute to the Greens’ modern public image. However, she distinguishes herself from Habeck by more in-depth policy knowledge. While the more charismatic Habeck tends to indulge in outlining the philosophical and ideological framework of Green politics, Baerbock likes to delve into the policy nitty-gritty, like Germany’s coal phase-out. This makes her a more popular figure within the party, while Habeck enjoys higher approval ratings among voters.

It would be superficial to reduce the Greens’ soaring approval ratings to their party leaders’ public image. Both Baerbock and Habeck have pressed ahead with establishing the party as a socioecological alternative for centrist voters, veering away from a common perception that it could not reach beyond its traditional following. This mainly included educated, middle-aged voters with high incomes living in metropolitan environments.

In an interview, Robert Habeck stated the party’s intent to detach itself from this misconception: “Our goal is not only to be a milieu party. We are now starting a new phase.” The Greens have benefited from climate protection, gradually receiving more public attention due to external events and activism by various groups, like the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and the Fridays for Future climate movement. With awareness of the issue of global warming increasing, the Greens are succeeding in reaching out to the “middle of society.”

A Green Chancellor?

As their traditional coalition partner, the SPD, is losing popularity, the Greens have been bustling to find new, more conservative political allies. After the 2017 general election, the Greens negotiated with the center-right CDU/CSU and the Liberal Democrats (FDP) to form a government. That was the continuation of the party’s strategic opening to all ends of the political spectrum, as the Greens had already formed coalitions with both parties in several state governments. In 2011, the party had already reached a significant milestone: Winfried Kretschmann won the state election of Baden-Wuerttemberg by appealing to conservative voters and became the first Green minister president, with the mighty CDU/CSU as their junior coalition partner.

But the strategy of electability and reaching out to centrist voters does not come without its repercussions. Luisa Neubauer, the spokeswoman for Fridays for Future, a movement popularized by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, has criticized the Greens for abandoning their ecological core values and for delaying the steps required to combat climate change. Going head to head with the Greens, she asked: “If even the Greens can’t come up with a policy that has the capacity to take on the climate crisis — where else can you start?” The movement has also reprimanded the Greens for supporting the construction of a highway through a forest in the federal state of Hesse.

Another accusation the party leadership faces is its failure to commit to the ambitious target of limiting global warming to 1.5˚C. Many leading party figures believe Fridays for Future’s radical demands are a hindrance to communicating the cause of climate protection to large parts of the population. Conversely, the movement, which regards itself to be “greener than the Greens,” disdains the party’s soft approach. Nevertheless, the Greens remain imperturbable in their quest to appeal to a broad majority of Germans. Due to consistently high polling numbers, the party intends to select its first-ever candidate for the chancellorship. Thus far, Baerbock and Habeck have resisted media pressure to decide who will challenge the CDU/CSU’s candidate.

To the public eye, this delayed decision makes the Green leadership appear tentative and insecure. Indeed, the party seems unsettled by the consequences of its electoral strategy. Barring the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), all parties in the German Bundestag are courting the Greens. After the election of Armin Laschet as the CDU/CSU’s party leader, an alliance between the Christian Democrats and the Greens as the junior coalition partner remains the most likely path to power. This constellation would facilitate the Greens taking up the federal Ministry of Finance and delivering a budget that sets the course for ecological modernization.

Within Earshot

Preferred coalitions with the SPD and Die Linke (The Left) appear unlikely. Yet as voting behavior becomes increasingly volatile, the Greens must take all possible outcomes into account. That includes coalitions with the SPD and The Left, and the responsibility of holding the chancellorship as the larger party.

The Greens are within earshot of historic electoral success. As Svenja Flaßpöhler, the editor-in-chief chief Philosophie Magazin, says: “Actually I would like to see the Greens enter government participation with courage … There is nothing to lose. The worst that can happen is that we are voted out of office again after four years. I miss this attitude a bit at the moment.”

As shown, the odds are pointing toward success. Climate change has entered mainstream politics and is at the tip of most people’s tongues. Poll numbers are soaring, and the party leaders’ personalities reflect the current zeitgeist. The Greens should not shy away from the challenge of government responsibility. Part of this challenge will undoubtedly be the juggling act of maintaining their credibility as an environmental party while serving the electorate as a whole.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Germany’s Greens Are Within Earshot of Power appeared first on Fair Observer.

Merkel’s approval ratings have skyrocketed during the pandemic. Recent polls show that 72% of Germans are either satisfied or very satisfied with her performance. The last time Merkel enjoyed such high popularity was in January 2015, shortly before the refugee crisis, which saw her approval ratings plummet. The refugee crisis divided German society and eroded trust in democratic institutions and the political class. Recovery from this, at least during Merkel’s tenure, appeared unlikely. But it seems another crisis was needed to reignite the love between the German public and the chancellor, a relationship that is entering its 16^th — and final — year. 

The Downward Spiral of Angela Merkel’s CDU

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Since Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer announced her resignation as party leader in February this year, three potential successors have been waiting in the wings. They will find it hard to live up to Merkel’s qualities that endeared her not only to the German, but also the global, public. Merkel’s unagitated, unpretentious and clear-headed governing style that proved particularly effective during the pandemic threatens to overshadow the three men itching to succeed her.

Friedrich Merz: Merkel’s Antithesis

Leading the polls among the three candidates is Friedrich Merz, a lawyer and former supervisory board chairman of the asset managing firm Blackrock. He comes from the economically liberal and conservative wing of the CDU, endorsing less state regulation of the economy. In 2000, before Merkel ousted him as CDU whip in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, Merz demanded a so-called “German leading culture” as a counterweight to the model of multiculturalism. Even today, he proposes cuts to social benefits for immigrants. Furthermore, he set off controversial intra-party debates during CDU regional conferences in 2018 by questioning the individual right to asylum. 

His appeal: Despite losing to Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer in his first attempt to become the CDU leader in 2018, Merz is a popular figure among party members and has a devout group of supporters. He is a good speaker and can draw large crowds. Merz comes across as authentic and a straight talker. Furthermore, he embodies the times of the 1990s and the early 2000s, when the world seemed less complicated. That could give him an advantage, especially among older male voters.

His Achilles heel: Merz is an old foe of Angela Merkel and hasn’t occupied political office for almost 18 years. Hence, he cannot count on much support among senior party figures in the CDU, which is vital to securing the leadership. He recently underlined his intra-party role as a divisive lone warrior by stating that the cancellation of the conference on December 4 was the latest part of a concerted effort to prevent him from becoming party leader.

How he has fared during the pandemic: Without a government position and after catching COVID-19 in March, Merz struggled to get much public attention during the first few months of the pandemic. That has not changed despite his attempts to initiate a debate about the post-coronavirus economic recovery. Only his recent accusations around the delay of the party conference caught attention, probably not to his advantage.

Armin Laschet: Merkel’s Man

Merz’s closest rival, Armin Laschet, is the minister president of Germany’s most populous state of North-Rhine Westphalia. He represents a continuation of Merkel’s policies and is known for defending her controversial stance on refugees and migration policy. Concerning national issues, Laschet tends to strike a moderate rather than conservative tone. Nonetheless, he has shown to be capable of appealing to the conservative wing of the party by buckling down on crime in his home state.

His appeal: Laschet is a candidate for cosmopolitan, left-leaning swing voters. Also, he has an ace up his sleeve: Laschet has teamed up with Health Minister Jens Spahn, whose conservative profile appeals to voters in rural Germany. This double ticket, which speaks to a broad voter base, and the support of the largest and influential CDU state association from North-Rhine Westphalia, make him a favorite to win the leadership.

His Achilles heel: Laschet’s attributes of being a unifier and striking moderate tones has its flipside. He is not a charismatic leader who can capture people’s hearts, which might be a disadvantage in the final weeks of the leadership race. 

How he has fared during the pandemic: As head of a state government, the COVID-19 crisis was a chance for Laschet to get an advantage over his competitors. He failed to seize it. In his attempt to take a more light-hearted approach to the virus, Laschet exuded nervousness. It came across as a desperate attempt to distinguish himself from his adversary, the Bavarian Minister President Markus Söder, who implemented more rigorous measures to fight the pandemic. But with time, as people become weary of constraints, his strategy might come to fruition.

Norbert Röttgen: Merkel’s Smartest

Norbert Röttgen, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag, represents the left-wing of the CDU. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, he instigated the phasing out of Germany’s nuclear power as federal environment minister. He also favors a yet unprecedented coalition between the CDU and the Greens on a national level. Regarding foreign policy, he demands a more decisive and self-assured role for Germany in international affairs.

His appeal: As a former member of Merkel’s cabinet, Röttgen was referred to as “Muttis Klügster” — Mother’s Smartest. His strength is a profound knowledge of policy, coupled with rhetorical skills that allow him to come across thoughtful and precise.

His Achilles heel: Röttgen has no noteworthy supporter group within the party and is having trouble distinguishing himself from the other two candidates. On the one hand, his policies resemble Laschet’s too closely while also not appealing to conservative party members. He is the clear outsider in the race.

How he has fared during the pandemic: Not very well. Without inhabiting any political office, Röttgen was hardly visible during the pandemic.

What About Markus Söder?

Regardless of how the leadership race unfolds, Markus Söder, the party leader of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), is touted as Germany’s next chancellor. Most Germans would prefer him over the three candidates running for the CDU’s party leadership. According to opinion polls, 37% of the German electorate would choose Söder as chancellor over potential competitors from the Greens and the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Despite being the second choice among CDU members after Friedrich Merz, 53% of the membership regards Markus Söder as the candidate with the highest chances of winning a general election. 

Söder’s rising popularity is nothing short of unexpected. In his younger years, Söder came across as an overambitious agitator and a vain self-promoter. But he has masterfully used the COVID-19 crisis as a stage to demonstrate a statesmanlike demeanor with a supposedly firm grip on things. Remarkably, above-average coronavirus case numbers and failures in Bavarian testing centers have not affected his high approval ratings. But Söder himself has remained tight-lipped about his ambitions. When asked whether he rules out running for chancellor, he typically replies with the phrase, “My place is in Bavaria.” Until now, this non-committal strategy has proved to be shrewd. While the three candidates might wear themselves out in petty skirmishes, he can enhance his idealized self-image of the caring and resolute Bavarian chief minister.

Nevertheless, his opportunity to run for chancellor is dependent on the outcome of the leadership race. An equally ambitious fighter, Friedrich Merz would hardly give the chancellorship a miss if elected party leader. Only a victory for Laschet or a surprise candidacy of his running mate, Jens Spahn, would open a clear window of opportunity for Söder.

The delay of the party conference has added a new dimension to the race. It has given candidates in public offices like Laschet and Söder more time and opportunity to shine. In contrast, other candidates, particularly Friedrich Merz, are scrambling for the limelight. That has led to resentment as Merz sees the delayed party conference as a plot to thwart his chances. He might have a case.

The longer Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer remains party leader, the more she can pull strings toward a more favorable outcome. It is an open secret that she, as well as Angela Merkel, would prefer Laschet over Merz. Also, Kramp-Karrenbauer warned against possible surprise candidacies to avoid a “ruinous competition.” Rumors suggest that Jens Spahn, who is increasingly popular among CDU members as well as voters, could enter the race.

As the infighting in the party commences, the CDU should not forget why the leadership race is taking in the first place. The CDU is at a crossroads and under severe pressure from the right. As the pandemic continues to create problems for Angela Merkel’s government, her party has to decide whether it wants to win back conservative voters from the far-right Alternative for Germany party or stay on a liberal course set by Merkel.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Who Are the Men Hoping to Succeed Angela Merkel? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Anti-Semitism Continues to Be a Steady Feature Among Germany’s Radicals

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Roman Yossel Remis was leading the prayers at the synagogue on the day of the attack and stated, “Today I experienced what it means to be Jewish, to be a Jew in 2019.” According to the journalist and author Richard Chaim Schneider, the attack in Halle showed that “Anti-Semitism has long since returned to the center of society. No, not arrived, because it never left: it simply crawled out of its holes again.”

Jewish Voters Want to Know

The Halle terrorist attack was the point of culmination and a gruesome expression of overriding societal developments concerning anti-Semitism in Germany. According to the latest report on anti-Semitism from Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, “Anti-Jewish sentiment can be found in all extremist areas of Germany but is particularly prevalent in the right-wing spectrum.” Corresponding anti-Semitic attitudes also circulate among conspiracy theorists, in Islamism and, to a lesser extent, in left-wing extremism. Recent statistics undermine these worrying developments: Anti-Semitic violence doubled between 2017 and 2019, and 85% of the 73 anti-Semitic acts of violence in 2019 were motivated by right-wing extremism. 

The return of anti-Semitism into the mainstream of German society highlights the question of where political parties stand in respect to its manifestations. The question also weighs heavily on those affected, namely Jewish people living in Germany. Linda Rachel Sabiers, a German author and columnist of Jewish descent, tried to describe the psychology of Jewish voters. According to Sabiers, many hinge their voting decisions on two key questions. Which party does the most against anti-Semitism and how to “vote Jewish.”

These were the questions she had to face up to herself: “If one wants to vote Jewish … one can perhaps weigh up which party actively opposes anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. The search for a political home that offers both has made many Jews unhappy. … For years, I asked myself similar questions when voting, and at times — because of the anti-Semitism that flared … — I felt so cornered that between the ages of 18 and 34, I had no normal relationship to voting.” Following Sabiers’ opinion that this pattern of thought seems to be widespread among Jewish voters, a closer look at Germany’s political parties is of interest. Where do the main German parties stand in regard to anti-Semitism?

Alternative for Germany (AfD) 

Despite leading representatives of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) stressing the party’s pro-Israel and pro-Jewish stance, statements by members repeatedly trigger allegations of anti-Semitism. Even the existing faction, Jews in the AfD, which the AfD often refers to as evidence for the party’s pro-Jewish viewpoints, cannot gloss over anti-Semitic tendencies in the party ranks. The Central Council of Jews in Germany criticized the AfD’s pro-Jewish image by stating that the “AfD is a danger for Jewish life in Germany [and] a racist and anti-Semitic party.”

This warning comes against the backdrop of numerous problematic incidents of anti-Semitism within the AfD. One accusation was brought against Wolfgang Gedeon, an MP for the AfD in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, according to whom the view that the blame for the Second World War lies with the Nazis is “a version dictated by Zionism.”

Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) 

Learning the lessons from the Nazi past and in correspondence with the pro-Jewish fundamental consensus in postwar politics in Germany, anti-Semitic references ceased to play a part in the programmatic alignment of the center-right CDU/CSU. Nevertheless, the reproaches of anti-Semitism occurred regularly. Most prominently, Martin Hohmann, a former CDU MP, stated in 2003 that the claim of collective guilt against Germans during the Nazi period should also apply to Jewish people. The CDU/CSU subsequently excluded Hohmann from the fraction and party. Hohmann joined the AfD. 

Liberal Democrats (FDP)

After the foundation of the FDP in the 1950s, national liberal tendencies were dominant. The party included people who had held high positions in the Nazi regime. From the late 1960s onward, the FDP departed from its national liberal imprint toward a center to center-right party.

But in 2002, the infamous Möllemann scandal awoke ghosts of the past. Jürgen Möllemann, a former MP in the national parliament, the Bundestag, was accused of stirring up anti-Semitic attitudes in society by claiming that the Israeli prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, had to bear the blame for the escalation of the Middle East conflict. He also branded German-Jewish television journalist, Michel Friedman, to be his political propagandist. The FDP refrained from taking decisive action against Möllemann. Since then, no incidents of equal gravity occurred.

The Greens 

The center-left Green Party, which defines itself as a political force oriented toward human rights and the environment, publicly condemns anti-Semitism. Correspondingly, issues with anti-Semitism remained the exception. Still, debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulted in internal party disputes about potential anti-Semitic remarks and connotations. One major incident took place in 2002, when Jamal Karsli, an MP in the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament, criticized the Israeli armed forces for applying Nazi methods in the conflict. In reaction to accusations of using anti-Semitic rhetoric, Karsli left the party and joined the FDP.

Die Linke (The Left)

A minority of The Left party harbors a pronounced hostility toward Israel that bubbles up regularly. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether anti-imperialism, anti-Semitism or a mixture of both lies at the forefront of this hostility. Anti-Israel positions in the left-wing of the party usually aim at Israeli state policies toward Palestine. By often alluding to a “David versus Goliath” narrative, Israel supposedly acts as an imperial, ruthless power.

Among several problematic intraparty incidents was the invitation of two controversial publicists and Israel critics, Max Blumenthal and David Sheen, to a discussion on the topic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by two MPs from The Left. Gregor Gysi, former party whip in the Bundestag, disapproved of the invitation and decided to call off the meeting.

Social Democratic Party (SPD)

The center-left SPD has been steadfast in its committed stand against anti-Semitism. André Levi Israel Ufferfilge, a researcher in Jewish Studies at Münster University, wrote in 2009: “In my opinion, the SPD seems to have a good standing with many Jews. … It is very welcome that the SPD has a working group for Jewish Social Democrats and that Judaism is considered part of the roots of social democracy in the SPD’s latest party manifesto.”

Although anti-Semitic incidents are just as rare as with the Greens, the party has not been untouched by accusations. In 2018, Ulrich Mäurer, an SPD senator from Bremen, falsely claimed that the Israeli army is “executing dozens of Palestinians at the border fence.” In response to fierce criticism from outside and within the party, Mäurer apologized for his “unfortunate choice of words.”

Germany’s Parties Need to Act on Anti-Semitism

All parties in the German Bundestag show sensitivity toward the issue of anti-Semitism and are quick in denouncing it. Still, some, particularly the AfD, either display more frequent or singular prominent allegations of anti-Semitism, like the Möllemann scandal in the FDP, that persist in the public memory. Thanks to fewer major allegations, Jewish voters lean toward parties closer to the center, like the SPD and the Greens.

Nevertheless, none of the parties have been unblemished by accusations of anti-Israel or anti-Semitic rhetoric. These controversial incidents often give rise to exhaustive debates among the German public about the thin line between justifiable criticism of Israeli politics and anti-Semitism. Due to the public attention and the recent increase in anti-Semitic violence, these intra-party incidents weigh heavily on the minds of Jewish people and voters, and hence deserve scrutiny.

Jewish voters in Germany seem to make their voting decision dependent on the parties’ attitudes toward anti-Semitism. That highlights their vulnerability in society, which originates in Germany’s history and the persecution of Jews during the Nazi period. This vulnerability has reemerged due to soaring anti-Semitic attitudes in Germany. The growing concerns of Jewish people is a call to action for Germany’s political parties. Evaluating their own and other parties’ activities against anti-Semitism more thoroughly should be a small building block of a bigger picture, namely protecting Jewish life in Germany.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Anti-Semitism Is Resurfacing Again in Germany appeared first on Fair Observer.

Divisions within society, with some welcoming Germany’s worldly alignment and others fearing super-alienation, mirrored themselves within Merkel’s ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). The refugee crisis heated up a dilemma the CDU has grappled with for years: Can Muslims belong to Germany and a conservative Christian democratic party?

The Downward Spiral of Angela Merkel’s CDU

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Party colleagues instantly rebuked Merkel’s comments. Most prominently, Horst Seehofer, the home secretary in her cabinet who had previously insisted on speeding up deportations of rejected asylum seekers, corrected Merkel by saying that “Muslims who live with us obviously belong to Germany,” but this “does not mean we give up our country-specific traditions and customs out of a misplaced consideration for others.” The CDU/CSU’s struggles to find consensus in assessing the status of Muslims in Germany have been long-running. But why is it a subject of debate at all?

Valuable Voters

Whether the CDU/CSU likes it or not, between 4.4 and 4.7 million Muslims currently live in Germany, making up 5.4% to 5.7% of the population. Therefore, Muslims are an inevitable subject of debate for the CDU/CSU for both interest-based and ideological reasons. The growing number of Muslims in Germany is of interest-based significance for the CDU and a chance to secure future electoral success. Some 1.5 million Muslims, or 2,4% of all voters, are eligible to vote, making them a sizeable electoral group.

Traditionally, Muslims harbor affiliations with center-left parties. Nevertheless, the CDU/CSU has discovered a vital interest in appealing to Muslim voters, as Andreas Wüst, a political scientist at Stuttgart University, indicates: “Merkel brought in a different wind by emphasizing the importance of the immigration society. In the meantime, efforts are also being made in the CDU to support Muslims.” Already in 2004, Bülent Arslan, former chairman of the CDU’s German-Turkish Forum, stressed that “around 50 to 60 percent of the Turks living in Germany are conservative. That is also a potential for the CDU.”

The second reason for intra-party discussions is the ideological orientation of the CDU/CSU. As a self-proclaimed catch-all party of the center-right, its core voters wish to preserve the ethnic makeup of society as well as the social values and religious beliefs associated with the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions. Thus, Muslims challenge two pillars of conservative thinking: the traditional ethnic constitution and religious imprint of German society.

With its roots in political Catholicism of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the CDU was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War as a non-denominational party, incorporating Catholic and Protestant Christians into its structures. Preserving these roots while remaining an urbane party is a balancing act the CDU/CSU has struggled with over the last two decades. The party manifesto and policy still reveal anti-Islamic tendencies. In the latest party manifesto, the terms “Islam,” “Islamism” and “Islamist” appear only nine times. Moreover, they show up exclusively in the context of dangers such as Islamic terrorism and fundamentalism.

Further evidence for the CDU/CSU’s skeptical attitude toward Islam is the long-raging debate in Germany about Muslim women wearing headscarves. Between 2004 and 2006, eight of Germany’s 16 federal states introduced a headscarf ban for female teachers in public schools and for public servants. The CDU/CSU governed six of them at the time. In 2019, the CDU leadership proposed that Muslim girls shouldn’t wear headscarves in nurseries and primary schools because “Wearing a headscarf makes little children recognizable as outsiders. We want to prevent this from happening in any case.”

A Party Split

Another debate in 2019 revealed further divisions within the CDU regarding its attitude toward Islam. It was triggered by the party whip in the German parliament, the Bundestag, Ralph Brinkhaus. When asked the question if a Muslim chancellor from the CDU/CSU in 2030 would be conceivable, he replied, “Why not?” — as long as he is “a good politician” who “represents the values ​​and political views of the CDU.”

Adverse responses came in thick and fast. According to Christoph de Vries, a CDU spokesman for internal affairs, “Whoever stands for the CDU/CSU as chancellor does not have to be Christian, but must represent Christian Democratic values ​​and feel a part of Germany. Unfortunately, this does not apply to a larger proportion of Muslims who emulate religious fundamentalism and feel attached to foreign heads of state.”

Still, party colleagues, like the undersecretary for integration in North Rhine-Westphalia Serap Güler, leaped to Brinkhaus’ defense: “Ralph Brinkhaus’s answer simply made clear that in the CDU no one is placed at a disadvantage because of his beliefs as long as he represents our values ​​and political views.”

Angela Merkel couldn’t take her party along in her progressive outlook on the status of Islam in Germany. The CDU/CSU remains torn between two attitudes: first of all, recognizing that Germany is an immigration society and, secondly, attempting to preserve its Christian roots and win back conservative voters. Many of them have switched allegiance to the Alternative for Germany (AfD) — a party that has thrived on anti-Muslim populism.

This predicament continues amid the current debate over the succession of party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. She stood for the liberal course set by Merkel but failed to stamp her authority on the party. Conservative circles within the CDU are now pinning their hopes on Friedrich Merz, the former party whip who was driven out by Merkel in 2002 and is now pledging to win back voters from the AfD. Any outcome of the leadership race would only paper over the cracks of the debate over whether or not Muslims can truly belong to Germany and its conservative ruling party.

Perhaps the wavering attitudes and mixed messages were the results of equally ambiguous leadership. While recognizing Islam as a part of Germany, Merkel simultaneously sowed mistrust in a multicultural society in 2010 by declaring that “The approach of multiculturalism has failed, absolutely failed!” It seems that the CDU is neither willing nor capable of providing a coherent answer to its internal dilemma concerning Islam. It welcomes Muslim immigrants while mistrusting their culture, appealing to Muslim voters while being outraged by the prospects of a Muslim head of state. The reality of Germany as an immigration society and 4.5 million Muslim citizens is clear-cut and stark. The CDU/CSU’s attitude toward this reality isn’t.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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