In his very first (if long-awaited) speech on October 3, 2017, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier proclaimed the following: “The lessons of two World Wars, the lessons of the Holocaust, the full rejection of all ethnonationalist [völkisch] thinking, racism, and anti-Semitism, as well as assuming responsibility for the security of Israel—all this is part of being German.” And there it was again: the good old Weizsäcker tradition. Except that federal parliamentary elections had just taken place nine days before. And in light of the results of those elections, Steinmeier’s recourse to this self-image of the Good German came across like a mix between provocation, defiance, and plain old absurdity. Because on September 24, 2017, just under six million adult Germans had voted for völkisch-ethnonationalist and anti-pluralist political thought. The claim of an anti-racist, anti-antisemitic, and anti-völkisch Germanness had just been radically refuted by recent events. And by that, I don’t just mean election results; I also mean the uncovering of the National Socialist Underground (NSU), PEGIDA’s Monday demonstrations, the list goes on . . .
Steinmeier’s distancing from racist and anti-Semitic positionalities was accompanied by his silent refusal to acknowledge how election day had made German society’s ongoing entanglement with the history of National Socialism visible. Instead, the president stood at his lectern on German Unification Day and acted like this new German “normality” had prevailed and carried on unchanged. It’s difficult for me to see anything else in Steinmeier’s insistence than the expression of a wish for how Germany should be—but isn’t, and also never was.
This kind of refusal to recognize political reality is no exception to the rule for German politicians. On December 18, 2017, Anetta Kahane, leader of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation—a prominent organization engaged against racism, right-wing extremism, and anti-Semitism in Germany—described an episode for the Frankfurter Rundschau that had occurred several years earlier during a visit with the Governing Mayor of Berlin:
Approximately twenty people had come—Berlin Jews: advisers, artists, athletes, students, journalists, business folk. They told stories, one after the other. Every story was about insults; degradation; forced discussions about guilt, the Holocaust, and wicked Israel; the lack of protection for Jewish children threatened by violence. These stories took place on the street, at university, in school, at youth clubs, at work parties, on the playground, in art galleries or fitness studios. The aggressions had come from every kind of German—mainstream or minority, rightwing or left. After everyone present had spoken, there was a moment of silence in the room. Then the mayor stood up. No, he said, he couldn’t believe that. There was no danger of antisemitism, and Jews could move about as freely as they pleased. He took a photo with a Jewish athlete; then he left. Leaving us behind with open mouths.
The mayor left the room because he didn’t want to know how normal experiences of anti-Semitism are. When Steinmeier claimed that “the full rejection of all ethnonationalist thinking, racism, and anti-Semitism” was a part of being German, he ignored one eighth of Germany’s voters. At the very minimum. But apparently, the president and mayor alike know more about how Germany really is. In their 2017 “primer,” Mit Rechten reden (Talking with the Right), Per Leo, Maximilian Steinbeis, and Daniel-Pascal Zorn attempt to account for such denials of reality. For these authors, this denial is rooted in a moralism they detect particularly in their “leftist friends” (35–40). I, too, recognize this particular brand of denial, but I think the attempt to locate it politically is nonsense. The denial of reality is not some specific attribute of the political Left, but rather the basis for all German claims of normality—relying, as they do, upon the inversion of relations between self-image and political reality. Because Germans no longer wish to be perceived as völkisch, anti-Semitic, and racist, political reality must behave accordingly. And so the 12.6 percent of the population who voted for the AfD are reframed not as an affirmation of ethnonationalist thinking, but as an expression of “political frustration.” And the past continues to be treated as though it were the past. You know: Vergangenheitsbewältigung [overcoming the past]. Because things can’t come to be, if we don’t permit them to.
Alas, if only the president were just speaking strategically in order not to concede discursive space to the Far Right. But I don’t think this is very plausible. In preparation for his speech, Steinmeier spent months traveling through Germany to meet people and converse with them. The Republic had been awaiting this hot take on the issue for quite some time. And this speech was the result of his field work. Author and Gorki Theater columnist Mely Kiyak provides the following commentary on Steinmeier’s words:
Maybe I’m nuts or something, but I’ll try to explain it this way: Uwe Bohnhardt, Uwe Mundlos, and Beate Zschape are all picture-perfect examples of people who reject everything that Steinmeier just listed off. They’re antisemites, racists, völkisch-ethnonationalists, etc. Are people suddenly rejecting their German identity? Are all Germans now antiracists by birth?
Precisely. It’s not like Steinmeier could have completely ignored the political Right, but it is revealing how he chose to thematize them. He spoke of new “walls that arise due to alienation, disappointment and anger” in this country, by which he probably sought to describe the motivation behind voters electing the AfD. And that was it. Really. This isn’t just paternalistic—in that it fails to seriously reflect on people’s political decisions. It also demonstrates Steinmeier’s refusal to recognize the AfD as a returning specter of ethnonationalist thinking in this country, and its voters, as the willing enforcers of this movement. As if AfD voters were children who didn’t realize the consequences of their actions. Which is total bullshit. Or doesn’t matter. Because who’d actually believe that everyone who voted for the NSDAP also subscribed to the Stürmer or read Hitler’s Mein Kampf? Well, the president didn’t want to ruminate about this chapter of German history anyway. His interpretation of the political situation relied on a self-image that—as a price for his adherence to its vision—left him no other choice but to construe the voters of an openly far-right party as the frustrated portion of an otherwise good, anti-racist, and anti-völkisch Germany.
One might suppose that such an analysis of the present—grounded in a self-image as the Good German—would receive increasing scrutiny the further the political reality in Germany slips away from its own self-projections. And yet, despite every warning sign (of which the parliamentary election was only the latest and most visible), the anthem of the new, normal, and positively Heimat-conscious Germany continues to be sung. I need only say: the Ministry of Heimat. Or quote Steinmeier again, when he says: “Those who yearn for Heimat are not living in the past.” Apparently the official, political representatives of this country aren’t ready to give up satisfying their own nationalistic urges just because a couple Germans took things too far. No one stopped the music when asylum homes started burning over the past few years either.
If you scratch the surface a little, it’s easy to see that Steinmeier’s use of Heimat is anything but unproblematic. After touching on the definition of what constitutes legal migration to Germany, he turns to the subject of the “new arrivals”: “This means that those who arrive in our midst must first learn to speak our language, learn about democracy, our Basic Law, history.” Steinmeier found it crucial to remind us that refugees must kindly behave themselves when they come to Germany. Let’s take a minute here: an ethnonationalist, far-right party is inducted into the German parliament, and Steinmeier instructs the primary victim group of right-wing violence to integrate. As a refugee, that would sure make me feel welcomed with open arms. And then the president bids members of a “young, optimistic generation” in this country to celebrate German unity. Wait a minute! Is this the same optimistic generation composed—in no small number—by those directly threatened with physical violence by the party platform and beliefs of the AfD? This could at least have been an opportunity to assure refugees, (im)migrants, and their children that the state would provide them protection. But there was no word from Steinmeier about this. Not one single word.
In Mainz, on October 3, 2017, the president made a decision. Would he show solidarity with refugees, (im)migrants, “postmigrants” (as their descendants call themselves here), and Muslims threatened by the rhetorical and physical attacks of a völkisch-ethnonationalist political Right? Or would he show solidarity with those who have no problem voting for a party with such a political agenda? The president decided quite clearly to show empathy for the voters—also those voters of the AfD. The benefit of the doubt for an ethnic German community.
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Like Steinmeier, I’ve also traveled extensively through this Republic since the first appearance of the AfD in state parliaments; to meet people and talk with them. In doing so, I’ve heard a wide range of explanations for the success of this new party. Some explained to me that it was a protest movement, the result of political frustration. That it wasn’t really about concrete political ideology, but mostly about being “anti-establishment.” That could have been the case with Hitler, too, I thought, sipping my gin and tonic. I also met with people who saw—in voters of the AfD—lost and disgruntled Germans who could be won back. There was a tenderness in their language that really triggered me. As if we’d neglected to take these people with us on our anti-racist and anti-antisemitic field trips.
What exactly would it mean to “take them with us”? And had they even wanted to come along in the first place, when the school bus was waiting, honking at the curb? Did they stick out their thumbs, even a fraction of an inch, when first the Turkish-German and then the postmigrant theater floats paraded by with their confetti cannons? Whenever I heard this mantra on my travels about gathering the lost souls of AfD voters, I felt like standing up, throwing my plastic cup into one of the tidy corners, shaking my counterpart and screaming: Don’t you have anything better up your sleeve? Nothing but empathy or shoulder shrugs? The real scandal is that seventy-three years after the end of National Socialism a platform like the AfD’s could be acceptable to—electable by—so many people in Germany. It’s a catastrophe. CA-TAS-TRO-PHE.
In the past few months, there’ve also been suggestions on a political level about how to deal with the New Right. The blinders strategy of just ignoring them can probably be dismissed as ineffective after the parliamentary elections. Then, the idea of controlled confrontation suggested in Mit Rechten reden à la Per Leo, Maximilian Steinbeis, and Daniel-Pascal Zorn became the vogue. Those who fight their way through the book’s fanciful passages—its dizzying metaphors only rendering things more complicated than they are—find this basic recommendation: argue with the Right as earnestly as you can and let them make themselves laughable on their own. It’s important to recognize the distinction that, for the authors, one can only label those as “right wing” who speak in a specific discursive manner (12). Those who don’t speak at all, but simply commit one of the four crimes that—according to the Amadeu Antonio Foundation and Pro Asyl—have been committed, on average, against refugees daily in 2017, well, they don’t even pop up on the search radar in the first place. With this, the authors rule out a central tenet of right-wing politics from the get-go: violence. Simply defined away.
The authors of Mit Rechten reden already miss the mark in the title of their book: because with the New Right, it’s frequently not about an exchange at all, but simply a discursive hegemony. Thor von Waldstein, an author from the right-wing publisher Antaios, calls this strategy metapolitics. Ironically, this term can be traced back to the Marxist Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, though it’s been enjoying tremendous popularity among right-wing intellectuals, as well, since its employment by Alain de Benoist, the instigator behind the Nouvelle Droite in France. In questions of hegemony, the ability to impose one’s own topics and interpretations onto others is central. Cogent argumentation can also play a role, but it doesn’t have to. In fact, it seems to be irrelevant for most people anyway: those who believe Israel is a hindrance to world peace but still think it’s a lovely place for a holiday, those who think a constitutional democracy is important but have no problem when ID numbers are removed from police uniforms, or all those AfD gentlemen demanding social solidarity and economic neoliberalism at the same time. Political opinions aren’t based on argumentative consistency—which is why they can’t be overcome at this discursive level either. For Leo, Steinbeis, and Zorn, the New Right first and foremost represent a “language game” (28). For me and my friends, they represent the increased potential for physical harm.
The prevailing approach to dealing with the New Right in politics is showing one’s understanding for the already proverbial hardships and tribulations of their people. Inevitably, this recognition goes along with the acceptance of certain political principles—the fear of “foreign infiltration” is incomprehensible without an ideal of homogeneity, Islamophobia without the belief in a German guiding culture. I’ve got to say that, with all this pessimism, I was surprised by the excitement with which so many German politicians and publicists reacted to the electoral success of the AfD. It seemed as though they’d downright been waiting to concede room in their stories, interviews, and opinion pieces for right-wing, ethnonationalist, and liberal-nationalist positions.
A popular example from the time around the parliamentary elections was provided, of course, by Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU)—a political party with already nothing to their right but a razor-wire border wall. A party that never tires of surpassing itself in the promotion of backward-facing ideas about innovation. Was it not their very own Franz Josef Strauss who—in fitting celebration of the German economic miracle [Wirtschaftswunder]—proclaimed “A nation that has achieved such economic accomplishments has the right to no longer want to hear about Auschwitz”? Alexander Dobrindt aligned himself seamlessly with this kind of party thinking when he demanded a new conservative revolution. I’ve already joked about this in a different chapter, but the consequences of this kind of behavior are not funny at all. If the strategy for winning back right-wing voting groups becomes adopting their right-wing positions, the CSU will soon be so far to the right that they’ll eliminate any need for another right-wing party.
The Social Democrats (SPD) may point their political middle fingers at the AfD and PEGIDA, but they continue to deny their own rightward shift. In 2017, the notoriously shrill (and in the meantime silenced) loudspeaker Sigmar Gabriel formulated his vision of a social democratic party that would no longer need to make taboo such terminology as Heimat or Leitkultur. A vision that could re-connote these concepts in a positive manner. There is also an exhaustive tribute to Heimat in Steinmeier’s speech, even if the president represents this idea in a non-partisan manner. Both statements are not exceptions to—but rather the expressions of—a tangible trend. Immediately after their electoral defeat, the influential state association of North Rhine-Westphalia wanted to oversee the transformation of the SPD into a “modern Heimat party.” Their youth organization objected. All the same, in 2017, Thilo Sarrazin remained a card-carrying member of the SPD—and it’s no coincidence that Spiegel journalist Melanie Amann begins her book Angst für Deutschland (Fear for Germany) about the growing strength of the AfD, with a discussion of Sarrazin’s Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany Is Doing Away with Itself).
It doesn’t look much better for the Green Party, even if they don’t have a figurehead like Sarrazin to trot out. Party chair Katrin Göring-Eckardt announced in October 2017: “We love this country. It’s our Heimat.” She was criticized for this by the Green Youth [Grüne Jugend] faction of her party, but nevertheless received support from fellow party members like Cem Özdemir, Reinhard Bütikofer, Robert Habeck, and Renate Künast. I won’t even start with populists like Sahra Wagenknecht—she’s been brewing her own national and socialist stew within the Left Party [Die Linke] for a while now. And the Free Democrats [FDP] under Christian Lindner promote the selection of refugees according to liberal-economic criteria and the potential for speedy deportation. It seems fitting that the FDP coordinated its monochromatic campaign ads with the Berlin-based agency Heimat. In Austria, Heimatliebe [love for the Heimat] is also no longer the solitary field of right-wing or conservative parties, but has been ploughed extensively by the embattled Green Party presidential candidate Alexander Van der Bellen with slogans like “If you love our Heimat, don’t divide it” or “Heimat needs cohesion.”
Representatives of all parties active on the federal level in Germany tapped into the same keg in reaction to the AfD—a keg whose murky contents can be summed up with the following statement: we’ve got to take the concerns of AfD voters seriously. All parties seem to have taken note that successful politics can be made under the banner of völkisch-ethnonationalist slogans again. And so they play along. As a consequence, they’re reproducing Heimatliebe, fear of “foreign infiltration,” and Islamophobia. I describe this kind of wide-ranging recourse to political empathy as a rhetoric of affection.
I don’t just find this rhetoric of affection personally and politically questionable. It also seems to me to be a curious strategic focus for left-wing or left-liberal parties. Instead, they might consider expressing their solidarity with people with migration histories living in this country—people who nowadays comprise almost a quarter of the German population, of whom nearly half were eligible to vote in the last election. Are they not a future target voting group? Or one could try to actually practice social politics again instead of appropriating Heimat terminology—you know, something like real redistribution of resources and wealth? Otherwise, these kinds of social functions are taken over by new right-wing parties like the National Rally/National Front in France or the Law and Justice Party (PiS) in Poland. The much-lauded monograph Returning to Reims by French sociologist Didier Eribon is dedicated to uncovering precisely this process: the National Front’s acquisition of previously left-wing and Communist milieus.
The rhetoric of affection also stands in polar opposition to the rhetoric of austerity directed at (im)migrants, Muslims, and refugees. It’s time to finally trace out the roots of this affection—demonstrated across the democratic spectrum—for voters of the AfD, as well as the lack of empathy for those threatened by right-wing violence. I’m willing to bet that both originate from the same cloudiness that previously obscured the eyes of investigators who failed for so long to recognize the xenophobic profile of the National Socialist Underground. And so it becomes painfully clear that, in a crisis, one shows solidarity for those with whom one feels most closely connected. And that still seems to be the domestic Far Right and not those fleeing from war or poverty abroad. And this, too, is part of the integration paradigm.
Against this backdrop, it becomes easier to understand how political discourse could shift so effortlessly in the direction of nationalism under the influence of an anti-immigrant party like the AfD. Suddenly, everyone wanted and still wants to be proud of their German Heimat, whatever the reason. I would record this new Heimatliebe as a complete metapolitical victory for the New Right. And this is the precise moment at which the aforementioned dominance of Germany’s self-image over its political reality becomes dangerous. Because increasingly, it’s becoming less of a deliberate decision to think or act in a völkisch-ethnonationalist manner in Germany. Instead, in light of the current rhetoric of our political environment, it requires a decision not to do so.
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It’s becoming more and more apparent that the discourse about integration is part of the problem—not the solution—for our current situation, because it denies empathy to those who perhaps need it most. But the protection from right-wing violence for nearly a quarter of the German population cannot be a question of political persuasion. It is the obligation of democratically elected officials in a pluralist society like this one. And yes, I do think that protection from an existential threat is more important than pandering to the ideological concerns of 12.6 percent of the voting populace.
The right-wing delusion of social cohesion is rooted in the fear of fragmentation, panic, and scaremongering about the disintegration of society. These tactics have led us down dark roads historically. Germany collapsed once due to its fragmentation: during the Weimar Republic. And the political Far Right played no small part in that process. Its consequence was fascism—the only truly German revolution—which strove to establish a radical homogenization of social complexities and contradictions. Those same fantasies of conformity are celebrating their return today. Don’t give them an inch.
Empathy for right-wing voters is also careless when one considers this country’s political future. I don’t believe Germany will win the fight against the New Right without the votes of (im)migrant, postmigrant, Jewish, and Muslim citizens. And this critical—if perhaps unfamiliar—new alliance requires strong narratives, the willingness to accept self-criticism from all sides, and a political vision for a society beyond the current integration paradigm.
And yet, wherever I look, I see only the Theaters of Memory and Integration. If you’re lucky, the Carnival of Cultures takes place on a summer weekend in Berlin—where everyone can show off how cool their headscarves look and how well they play their musical instruments. Or you go to the Jewish Culture Days to dream to the plaintive melodies of clarinets from a vanished world. Or listen to a corny, Israeli pop star belting out songs anyone in their right mind would immediately tune out. It’s an old and dusty truism, trotted out time and again by leftists in their critique of multiculturalism: the staging of culture and diversity for German mainstream society is a very different animal than the actual recognition of diversity. But instead, every German wants to wear a yarmulke and show off how anti-antisemitic they are. In doing so, they probably fail to realize that this yarmulke also gives credence to the most religious elements of Jewishness. As if Deborah Feldman’s Hasidic Satmar community in Williamsburg, New York, were really the dominant expression of Jewish life in this country. It’s not.
We’re a long way away from the point the Right fears society is already at. And, since I’m writing this book to make their vision of social and cultural homogeneity impossible, I’ve chosen this title: De-Integrate!
