Fighting the AfD requires confronting the same dehumanising ideologies that once plunged Germany into darkness, writes Hebh Jamal [photo credit: Getty Images]
Germany is heading to the polls on February 23 after the “traffic light” coalition collapsed — an alliance between the SPD, FDP, and Greens. However, the political climate ahead of the vote is deeply concerning, as the far-right AfD has made “remigration” a central theme of its campaign.
Unlike deportation, which typically applies to non-citizens, remigration is a term coined by far-right ideologues to advocate for the forced return of non-Europeans to their countries of origin, regardless of their citizenship status.
Seen as some sort of remedy to mass migration, remigration invokes a completely homogeneous German society that is hostile to minorities and, more specifically, Muslims.
The policy plan to adopt remigration as a part of AfD’s platform was recently discovered to have taken place in a secret meeting of right-wing extremists and AfD members in Potsdam presented by Austrian identitarian Martin Sellner near Berlin in November 2023.
We now see this in AfD’s campaign strategy. Earlier this year, a regional branch of the German far-right AfD party sent out 30,000 fake plane tickets to residents in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe. The ticket, designed as a boarding pass, advertises a one-way flight from Germany to their “country of origin,” with the date set as the same day as the German federal election.
While the current chancellor Olaf Scholz and members of his leading SPD party are expressing supposed “horror” over modern-day Nazi rhetoric infiltrating the political discourse, I find it very difficult to see substantial differences in the migration policies of the other political parties.
For their campaign, the Christian Democratic Union copied posters from the banned neo-Nazi NPD, with a nearly identical slogan: “Deport rejected asylum seekers consistently.”
Recently, on January 18, the German Bundestag passed the Repatriation Improvement Act, enabling the swift deportation of asylum seekers, extending pre-deportation custody periods, and granting police broader authority to conduct searches in shared custody residences.
The European Council of Refugees and Exiles condemned the passing of this bill by claiming that it actively harms human rights organisations that facilitate sea rescue operations.
According to them, the bill can criminalise civilian and search operations on unaccompanied minors distressed at sea. SOS Humanity said that the German government: “broke their promises of the coalition agreement to not hinder civil search and rescue”, fearing the possibility of facing “up to 10 years in prison for their life-saving work”.
Most recently on January 28, Conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz of the CDU introduced a motion in the Bundestag calling for permanent border checks, the rejection of all asylum applications from migrants arriving through “irregular means of travel,” and the pre-deportation of all foreigners who have lost their appeals.
For the first time, a resolution posed in the Bundestag was passed with a narrow majority thanks to the support from the far-right AfD raising concerns about a potential voting coalition between the CDU, AfD, and possibly the FDP.
The motion was feared to pass last Friday but ultimately failed after hours of debate.
A huge factor in this was the uproar that took place in German media and the protests that erupted across the country, not focused on the potential law, but on the fact that a mainstream German party could be in a voting coalition with the AfD.
It was a close call but many of us are holding our breath to the inevitable normalisation of a party widely regarded as anti-democratic and borderline fascistic.
Subscribe Now and Listen to our Podcasts OnAll of this is a political stunt orchestrated by the mainstream political parties to appease their right-wing constituents while only paying lip service against fascist language, and it is being deployed against many groups — including the pro-Palestinian movement.
In fact, separate from their Jan 28 motion, the CDU party just issued a new policy paper planning to revoke German citizenship of dual nationals; while the FDP introduced a new policy that wants to accelerate deportations while reducing social benefits.
Merz presented his policy platform to revoke German citizenship on national television, and implied that the plan to revoke German citizenship from those who commit “serious crimes,” an example of which he says is those who “raise the Palestine flag in Berlin and call for the destruction of Israel.”
After 470 days of genocide, the pro-Palestinian movement in Germany has failed to garner any sympathy from the mainstream political elite.
In fact, I as a Palestinian face continuous slander from politicians across the political spectrum, which echo the same anti-Palestinian language as the AfD.
For my outspoken positions and duty toward the Palestinian cause and for claiming decolonisation is necessary, Mannheim Green Party councilmember Chris Rihm called me a Jew hater.
FDP politician and city councilman Volker Beisel went to the media to express his frustrations with me as a moderator during an event with Greta Thunberg, claiming I believe October 7 was a “happy day.”
And as recently as last week, the CDU-positioned antisemitism commissioner claimed I have an antisemitic evil spirit, and even compared me to the neo-Nazi, Martin Sellner, on his Instagram for moderating a panel of academics.
Fighting the AfD requires confronting the same dehumanising ideologies that once plunged Germany into darkness. But instead of rejecting this rhetoric, Germany’s political mainstream is embracing it.
This is a dangerous path, and it starts with the belief that a nation’s progress depends on the forcible removal of an entire people. For those of us who have faced this dehumanisation firsthand, the parallels are chilling — and the fight is urgent.
Hebh Jamal is a Palestinian American journalist based in Germany.
Follow her on Twitter and Instagram: @hebh_jamal
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.