Protesting Germany’s far-right: Fear of Africanization, Orientalization and Islamization

This article originally appeared in Anadolu Ajenci (AA) on January 24, 2024 and was written by Bridge Initiative Senior Researcher Farid Hafez

The author has been the Class of 1955 Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Studies at the US’ Williams College since 2021. Since 2017, he has been a non-resident researcher at Georgetown University’s The Bridge Initiative in Washington, DC. He has been co-editor of the annual European Islamophobia Report since 2015. Recent and forthcoming publications include Operation Luxor and Politicizing Islam in Austria: The Far-Right Impact in the Twenty-First Century.

ISTANBUL 

The last days in Germany were moving. Over the weekend, more than 1.4 million people took to the streets [1] to protest the far-right and their plans to deport people, from Berlin in front of the parliament to the conservative state of Bavaria, where more than 200,000 people gathered. This was a massive sign against a leaked [2] deportation “master plan” discussed by far-right leaders including the lately successful far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), [3] which currently holds 78 seats [4] in parliament but is reaching all-time high approval rates.

Racist ‘remigration plan’

The investigative editorial German investigative center Correctiv published a story [5] of a November meeting of the so-called Dusseldorfer Forum from last year. High-ranking members of the far-right AfD, leaders of the far-right Identitarian Movement, members of the Values Union (WerteUnion), an association within the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which separated itself on Jan. 20 this year to form its political party, and others from the far-right milieu gathered to discuss a plan dubbed “remigration.” The idea was to preserve a racist notion of white Germanness by expelling asylum seekers, foreigners with the right to stay, and “unassimilated citizens” as the keynote speaker of the Identitarian Movement, the Austrian Martin Sellner [6], suggested.