On the 10th January this year, details emerged of a conference where members of the European extreme right met with several leading members of the German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. The key event was the discussion of a plan for mass deportations of immigrants, so-called “remigration”. This would sweep up both asylum-seekers and any German citizen who was considered to be “unassimilated” to Western society and values. This isn’t a new idea; the concept of “remigration” has been heavily promoted over the last ten years by the European far right; it’s closely linked to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, the belief that there is a plan to replace the white peoples of Europe and America with immigrants; the Great Replacement is the danger, and remigration is the solution. The word has started to seep into the mainstream: recently Donald Trump has used the term.
The news of the conference and the AfD‘s involvement was met with a wave of street protests, and widespread condemnation, and there were calls for the party to be banned. Under pressure the AfD itself tried to distance itself from the meeting, and sacked the parliamentary assistant who had attended.
By the time a Syrian asylum seeker killed three people in a knife attack in the city of Solingen on the 23rd August the mood had changed. The attack was terrible timing for the German coalition government, a week before regional elections in which the AfD was close to a breakthrough. Predictably, the AfD used the incident to go on the offensive against immigration, but what is more worrying is how the mainstream parties responded: they echoed the AfD‘s arguments. What was needed was apparently less immigration and more deportations of failed asylum-seekers and criminals. A deportation operation took place a few days later to send convicted Afghans back to Afghanistan.
Shifting to the right in this way didn’t stop the coalition parties suffering big losses in the regional elections; the AfD scored historic successes, and became the largest party in Thuringia where its most extreme wing (“The Wing”) is based. In a panic, the government extended entry checks to the whole German border. Supposedly a temporary measure, it is nevertheless a major blow to the Schengen freedom of movement agreement, one of the pillars of the European Union’s single market.
In parallel with these developments has been the German response to Hamas’ attacks on 7th October last year and the subsequent devastating Israeli assault on Gaza. The dominant discourse has been that the Holocaust means that Germany has a special responsibility to defend Israel: protests against Israel’s actions and expressions of solidarity with Palestine have been repressed, and space for criticism of Israel’s campaign has been limited. In November, on the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Reichstag passed a (non-binding) resolution entitled “Never Again Is Now”. The resolution condemns antisemitism in its right-wing, Islamist and “left-wing anti-imperialist” forms, adopts the IHRA definition of antisemitism as its basis, and calls for “repressive options” including “closing gaps” in “residence, asylum and nationality law.” Hints, in other words, of deportations of those that the German state deems antisemitic. People would be deported not just because they weren’t legally entitled to asylum or because they were criminals, but because of their political opinions.
That’s a long journey in ten months. Germany’s coalition parties have allowed the AfD to set the political agenda: the debate about public safety from terrorism now revolves around limiting immigration, and the suspension of Schengen freedom of movement on Germany’s borders has been a gift to the AfD‘s campaign against the European Union. Now, with the Never Again Is Now resolution, the centre parties are moving further towards the idea of remigration, this time in the name of the fight against antisemitism. Step by step they are surrendering ideologically to the far right.