© REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann

When, just months after Germany’s reunification, I arrived in Dresden as a young reporter I suddenly landed in a very different world. A far darker one: the streetlights were dim and few and far between. Shop windows were tiny and dark at night. To find a rare restaurant, you had to know where you were going.

Buildings, unpainted for decades, were a uniform dark grey, their plaster crumbling. Balconies were often barred for fear they might collapse. Smells were different, too, with the sharp aroma of the lignite coal used for heating or the thick scent of the oil burnt in the Trabant two-stroke engines.

Factories were woefully outdated, roads narrow and bumpy, offices stuffy and overheated. I learnt that whoever had a home phone had probably been close to the communist power structures of the German Democratic Republic. Anybody else just dropped in or left notes on the door.

Dresden in 1991 was very different from the cities I already knew in West Germany or elsewhere in Western Europe. But it was also a world apart from East Berlin where after the fall of the Wall the pace of change had been much quicker. I spent nearly two years in Dresden—a time that profoundly shaped me and my views on recent German history.

Influx from the West

It was a heady time. We were part of history happening all around us, and we had the conviction that the world was taking a turn for the better. But even then, not everything was rosy. Many of today’s difficulties have their origins in the post-Wende era. (Wende, meaning turn-around, is the word most Germans use for the peaceful revolution of 1989.)

The biggest issue, I believe, has been the dearth of East German leadership.

In Dresden in the early 1990s, I was one of very few Western reporters who came to live in the city. It was different for public administration and business. Most top positions were soon filled with West Germans from Bavaria or Baden-Wuerttemberg who came to live and work in East Germany for a stint. Many of them were good people, and without them, unification—bringing the West German rule of law with all its sophisticated bureaucratic details to the East—could not have happened so quickly.

Initially, most Dresdners whom I talked to approved. They did not want to deal with yesterday’s communist officials, the representatives of a state they had just gotten rid of, when applying for a building permit or unemployment money. They had more trust in people from the West. Soon enough, however, sentiment turned, and the West Germans were increasingly seen as colonizers imposing their system on East Germans.

Stasi Informers Revealed

At the same time, as the files of the German Democratic Republic were opened, more and more information trickled out about the enormous number of East Germans—nearly 200,000 out of a population of 16.4 million in 1989—who had been secret informers for the Stasi, the infamous East German secret police.

A shocking number of the younger East Germans I met in Dresden—smart, ambitious people, charismatic, with leadership qualities and energy to spare—were revealed to have been informers. Spying on their relatives, friends, neighbors, colleagues, listening in to conversations, writing down damaging titbits of information about people close to them. Not a crime as such, but rightly considered to disqualify anybody from holding an important office, be it public or private.

And so, one by one, many of young leaders disappeared from the scene—here an energetic deputy in the Saxony state assembly, there a representative of Dresden’s chamber of commerce or a capable civil servant in one of the ministries. That the Stasi had contaminated and spoilt so many of the best, brightest people in East Germany was a tragedy, enormously painful for everybody involved and with very far-reaching consequences.

The Ugly Truth

Few of those informers, incidentally, were blackmailed or pressured by the Stasi into signing up. Many were attracted by the promise of being able to make a difference, of change being possible, if only people in power knew what was really happening. Flattery and material rewards were added bonuses.

One thing I learned from my Dresden friends, however: Do not gloss over the ugly truth of what informing means. If you—as a West German who were lucky enough not to grow up in such a corruptive system—think that anybody might have been sucked in, think again. You are belittling the courage and honesty of those who dared turn down the Stasi’s invitation to become one of theirs.

The erosion of the East German elites continues to this day. Not through Stasi poison, that’s long over. But for nearly 30 years now, a large share of the most talented young people from the East have moved to western Germany or beyond for more opportunities and a better life. It’s estimated that nearly 5 million East Germans have left since 1990; partly replaced by 3 million people who moved from West to East.

Vacuum Filled by the AfD

The most painful blow to those staying behind is the fact that a particularly high share of well-educated young women left. This means that many eastern German regions have been drained of initiative, optimism and leadership—and that too many young men have had to remain single. The East-West migration left a vacuum that is now being successfully exploited by the rightwing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Ironically, many of its leaders are West German in origin.

Yet it didn’t take the AfD to introduce racism, xenophobia, and Nazi ideas to East Germany. In the post-Wende Dresden, even Poles and Czechs from just across the border were regarded with suspicion and dislike. The Vietnamese guest workers who had come to the German Democratic Republic on a state contract were kept isolated in their barracks and deeply despised.

I vividly remember one day in 1991 when I was doing an interview at the headquarters of the Dresden police. As we were talking, we heard shouts of “Heil Hitler!” I went to the window and watched. A group of skinheads were marching across the courtyard doing the Nazi salute while police officers looked on and did nothing.

Neo-Nazi Riots

Those officers weren’t neo-Nazi sympathizers. They were caught in transition from one set of government to an entirely different one, unfamiliar with the new rules they were supposed to apply, and completely overwhelmed by the situation. A few years earlier, neo-Nazis would have been manhandled into prison; a few years later, they would have been facing criminal proceedings. Just then, however, they were allowed to walk about in triumph.

This vacuum helped neo-Nazis spread their ideas, as did boredom and the growing fear of losing out, of having been left behind. In September of 1991, I covered the riots in the small eastern city of Hoyerswerda, the first massive attack on foreigners. For days, neo-Nazi skinheads threw stones and firebombs at a hostel for Vietnamese workers. When those workers were eventually evacuated, the neo-Nazis switched their attacks to a refugee home a few streets away.

I will always remember Hoyerswerda, not just because the police were unwilling and unable to stop the riots. The most bizarre aspect was the attitude of the local crowd that had come to watch the attacks. It was like a festival: people took photos, applauded and commented. There were a lot of old people, but parents had also brought their small kids, some of them sitting on their fathers’ shoulders in order to have a better view.

What a break from small-town boredom—and what a disastrous signal to the right-wing groups then forming. Over the next several years, those riots were followed by attacks on foreigners all over Germany, but particularly in the East. Often enough, West German Nazis helped with money and expertise, but the biggest factor for being able to establish lasting structures was the weakness of the police and the judiciary.

Benefit of Hindsight

Today, the streets of Dresden are well-lit and filled with modern, shiny cars. In many towns around Saxony and beyond, the old centers have been beautifully restored. Industry is thin on the ground, but where it does exist, it is modern and competitive. The road signs for “Industrie-Nebel” (industrial fog) that warned drivers about the deep yellow smog in the coal-mining region south of Leipzig have disappeared for good.

No doubt, some, or even many, aspects of unification could have been handled better—with hindsight and without the frantic pace forced by events at the time.  Nearly 30 years on, two of the biggest problems that became so clearly visible after the Wende still shape East Germany’s landscape: the lack of a dynamic, indigenous leadership, and the spread of an illiberal, racist ideology. Both are related, I strongly believe, and it will take the rebuilding of local elites to create a better future for the whole of Germany.

Still we need to be aware that not everything that happened in the 30 years since the Wende is negative, despite the problems German unification brought to the region. Overall, in terms of democracy, personal freedom, prosperity, health, rule of law, or even environmental protection, it continues to be a fantastic success.

The post The Winds of Change appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Matthias Rietschel

Michael Kretschmer is the day’s hero. Deeply exhausted, Saxony’s state premier blinks under the harsh light of the television cameras. “The most important message of this day is: friendly Saxony has won,” he says among huge applause from his fellow Christian Democrats.

The first exit polls of Saxony’s state elections on September 1 had just been published. And while the xenophobic, revisionist, and populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) was able to nearly triple its results to 27.5 percent (from 9.7 percent in 2014), it didn’t come in first.

Kretschmer’s CDU won 32.1 percent, by far the worst result in 30 years of governing Saxony. Even so, Angela Merkel’s party continues to be the strongest party, and Kretschmer will continue as state premier if he can put together a workable coalition with the Greens. This time at least, the AfD will not make it into power.

A Personal Victory

This is Kretschmer’s personal victory. Nobody here has ever campaigned as hard as this 44-year-old engineer from the Eastern city of Görlitz, who spent the last two months crisscrossing his state, shaking hands, grilling sausages, and talking to absolutely everybody. Not for the last 20 years, a pollster said on Sunday night, did any of the Saxony premiers achieve as high a personal recognition score as Kretschmer.

In neighboring Brandenburg, which also held state elections on September 1, the picture is similar. Here, the race was even tighter, but in the end, the incumbent prime minister Dietmar Woidke managed to squeeze into first—26.2 percent for his Social Democrats versus 23.5 percent for the AfD. Coalition talks will likely be even more difficult than in Saxony, but the AfD was kept at bay.

Three conclusions stand out from these crucial state elections:

The first one is paradoxical: Kretschmer’s and Woidke’s narrow victories will strengthen their respective parties in Berlin and help to stabilize Merkel’s coalition government. At the federal level, both Christian and Social Democrats are profoundly relieved; they have gained a bit of time to turn things around in Berlin. Yet neither of them did much to help Kretschmer or Woidke win their elections.

On the contrary: Chancellor Angela Merkel is so intensely disliked by many voters in the East for her refugee policy in 2015 that local Christian Democrats didn’t even want her to show up for the election campaign. Merkel’s successor at the helm of the CDU, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, is struggling with her leadership role. And the SPD, which has been hit by ever more catastrophic election results, currently doesn’t even have a leader.

The second lesson is a pessimistic one: thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the AfD is deepening the split between East and West. The pollsters infratest dimap found that in Saxony, 66 percent believe that East Germans are being treated as second-class citizens. Among AfD voters, that share goes up to 78 percent.

During the election campaign, the AfD not only played on the resentment in the former East Germany, they stirred and stoked it. Its message has played particularly well in regions which have seen a massive exodus of higher-skilled people toward the West. The result is a deep mistrust of the country’s mostly West German elites and democratic institutions which will poison German society for a long time to come.

Yet the AfD’s success as the Easterners’ party—and this is the third conclusion—could prove a mixed blessing for the party. In Saxony and in Brandenburg, the party’s leading candidates belong to the far-right wing of the party, which is radically anti-foreigner and anti-establishment and unafraid of links with neo-Nazi groups.

Their strong showing in Sunday’s elections will give them sway over the party’s future direction. But what worked well in Saxony and Brandenburg may turn out to be a liability for elections in western Germany, where the party’s base is ultra-conservative rather than far-right. Also, most West Germans find the anti-Western sentiment that the AfD fueled in the East hard to stomach.

Shooting Itself in the Foot

Keep in mind, finally, that the numbers are firmly on western Germany’s side—North Rhine-Westphalia alone has far more inhabitants than all the East German Länder together—and it becomes clear that with its turn toward the east, the AfD may be shooting itself in the foot.

Autumn has only just started, and Germany still has one more regional election scheduled in the east. Thuringia will go to the polls on October 27. But it’s a slightly smaller state and, according to the latest polls, unlikely to give the AfD the big victory it was hoping for.

So what Germany has now, is a reprieve: for Merkel’s government in Berlin, for the political mainstream, and for the business community which feared that investors would pull out after an AfD victory. Right-wing populism is dangerously high and still rising—but time is not necessarily on its side. “We now have five years,” Kretschmer said—the next state elections are scheduled for 2024. “Time to also speak to those whom we have not yet been able to reach.”

The post Merkel’s Government Has Won a Breather appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

The poster reads: “We are the people!”. © REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

This November marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the event that precipitated the reunification of Germany and that, more than any other, has come to symbolize the collapse of the communist system both here and throughout Eastern and Central Europe.

As the country prepares for a rather somber recalling of those heady events three decades ago, two state elections on September 1 in what was known as the German Democratic Republic, or GDR, saw the right-wing populist, anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) surging. In Brandenburg, the AfD came second after the long-ruling center-left SPD (26.2 percent), more than doubling their previous result to 23.5 percent. In Saxony, the AfD won even bigger with 27.5 percent of the vote, a couple of points behind Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), which ended up with 31.2 percent. Meanwhile, in Thuringia, where elections are to be held on October 27, the AfD has surpassed the CDU and is close behind the Left Party, which lost heavily in both Brandenburg and Saxony.

In all three states, the AfD leadership belongs to the more radical wing of the party, more xenophobic and revisionist than the slightly more moderate leadership in the West.

Crucially, the party’s campaign in the East has not only been about immigration, a vote-winner since 2015. It has also quite explicitly sought to exploit lingering disappointments and frustrations in the former East. This in turn has led to a renewed debate about the failures associated with reunification. Why and how do the two parts of Germany continue to diverge, and why exactly is the East still different?

Party of the East

Overall, polls show that the AfD is the most popular party in the former GDR. Yet it is important not to depict the entire East as an AfD hotbed. While the party is far stronger in the East than the West, it still only attracts around a quarter of votes. In the European elections, although it was the strongest party in Saxony and Brandenburg, and a close second in Thuringia, in vibrant, growing cities like Leipzig and Jena, the Greens actually emerged as the strongest party.

Furthermore, it’s not particularly hard to be the biggest party in a very crowded field, with many parties only divided by a few percentage points. “We have a considerable fragmentation of the party system in Eastern Germany,” says Kai Arzheimer, professor of Political Science at the University of Mainz. “You can become the strongest party with 25 percent of the votes.”

It’s also clear that the AfD won’t get anywhere near power, as the other parties have vowed to reject any cooperation. Its success will still have an impact, as it will necessitate awkward coalitions between parties that would not normally be in government together. This could further erode trust in politics.

Antipathy to Multiculturalism

Nevertheless, the AfD’s success points to a different political culture in the former East, three decades after the end of the communist regime. First and foremost, the major issue associated with the AfD—its hostile stance toward refugees and foreigners—has obviously resonated in the East, although it is far from the only reason for its popularity there. While the AfD started life as a euroskeptic party, opposing Germany’s involvement in bailouts in other EU countries, it soon switched its focus to immigration. With each successive change of leadership, it has become more populist and right-wing.

The 2015 influx of close to one million refugees, many from war-torn Syria, proved to be a boon to the party. Research shows that across Germany, the main issue that marks out AfD voters from the supporters of other parties is an antipathy to a multicultural society and immigration.

The irony of course is that there is little history of immigration in Eastern Germany. While there were some “guest workers” from other communist countries, they were kept separate from the rest of the population for the most part. And in the 1990s, the combination of a bad economy and hostility to foreigners, such as the xenophobic riots in Rostock, meant that the East offered little attraction for new immigration.

According to the latest official statistics, while 23.6 percent of the total population in Germany has a “migrant background,” that is true for only 6.8 percent of those living in the former East.

A Paradox of Fear

However, research shows that, on average, the more migrants live in a city or in a region the less xenophobic people are, explains Holger Lengfeld of the University of Leipzig.

“This is a very long process that takes a long time for people to get used to multiculturalism as something normal,” says Lengfeld. “We assume that this is one of the reasons why people in Eastern Germany are more afraid of the multicultural society than people in Western Germany, because they have no experience of it. This explains the paradox that although fewer foreigners live in Eastern Germany, the rejection of the presence of foreigners is stronger.”

Journalist Sabine Rennefanz believes that the influx of refugees in 2015 also acted as a catalyst in Eastern Germany, churning up feelings of resentment. Rennefanz grew up in Eisenhüttenstadt, on the border with Poland, and has written many articles and a book Eisenkinder about her generation’s experience of the “Wende,” the time immediately before and after reunification. She says for some people, the arrival of the refugees “brought back memories of being foreign themselves in the 90s.”

And the 1990s were certainly a difficult time. After the initial euphoria of reunification and promises of “blooming landscapes,” things went downhill quickly. East Germany’s state-owned companies proved unable to compete under market conditions and there was soon an almost complete collapse of East German industry and with it massive unemployment. And there was little civil society to help cushion the blow.

As a result, many people had to start again from scratch in a very unfamiliar world. In the intervening years, many young people left the East, and the resulting demographic decline saw a dismantling of infrastructure in many places. Young women in particular left for western Germany, leaving behind many frustrated, disaffected men. Crucially, the AfD polls far better with men than with women.

Failures of Reunification

Then, during the financial crisis people were told that there was no money available for schools or buses or roads, Rennefanz says, “and then the foreigners arrived and suddenly there was money. This fueled a lot of resentment.”

The AfD has been clever at tapping into these resentments, by constantly attacking the current state governments, as well as the federal government, as an out-of-touch elite. Gero Neugebauer, an expert on the GDR and the politics of the reunification period, says that the AfD has been clever at knowing which buttons to press depending on the electorate. “In Brandenburg they say nothing about the euro, little about Muslims. They say that the elderly care is bad, that you have long ways to the doctor, that the transport connections are bad, that at the educational institutions the teaching is poor.”

And while the Left Party, the successor to the former ruling SED party, had long claimed to represent the interests of those in the former East, their subsequent participation in many state governments has led them to be increasingly regarded as part of the establishment.

According to Neugebauer, many disappointed Left voters became non-voters. “Then the AfD showed up and said: we will avenge you now, we will take revenge for the fact that you feel disadvantaged, that your expectations, both individual and collective, have not been fulfilled, and they attracted most of their votes not from the CDU, SPD and the Left Party, but from the non-voter camps and the small right-wing parties.”

“Complete the Wende”

And indeed, the AfD is using overt rhetoric and slogans this fall harking back to 1989 in its campaigns, with its talk of things like “Wende 2.0,” despite the fact that many of its prominent leaders such as the party head in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, are West German.

For example, an election poster in Brandenburg reads: “Become a civil rights activist. Get your country back—complete the Wende.” And there are stickers saying: “Dissidents are being spied on again” or “We are the people, then as now,” echoing slogans used by those who demonstrated against the GDR regime in 1989. At the launch of their party campaign in July, AfD leader in Brandenburg Andreas Kalbitz, who is also from West Germany, said: “The AfD is committed to completing the Wende.’” By doing so the party is of course implying that there are similarities between the Federal Republic of today and the totalitarian GDR state.

Many of those involved in the end of the GDR have been horrified by the AfD’s campaign. On August 20, 100 civil rights activists and prominent East Germans issued a joint statement entitled: “Not with us: Against the Abuse of the Peaceful Revolution 1989 in the Election Campaign.” One of the activists, former Federal Commissioner for Stasi Records, Marianne Birthler, also voiced her criticism in an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio. “There is no copyright on the phrase ‘We are the people,’ but if the AfD really meant that seriously, then it would also have to adopt the demands we made back then—for an open country with free people, against discrimination against minorities, against borders and against walls.”

Politically Excluded

“I find it really terrible that they can take this idea of the Peaceful Revolution and its heritage and say now we will finish this revolution,” says Rennefanz, adding: “I think they could take up this narrative because none of the other parties really dealt with the East until recently and, apart from a few exceptions, still haven’t really understood what is going on in the East.”

Indeed, economically the two parts of Germany are still far from aligned. Despite the around €100 billion a year being spent on overhauling the infrastructure and economy, eastern Germany is still a fifth less productive than the West, while only 7 percent of the country’s top 500 firms are based there, according to a report from the Halle Institute for Economic Research released earlier this year.

Yet the divide is being slowly bridged. The unemployment rate is now 6.9 percent in the East compared to 4.8 percent in the West. Meanwhile the East’s GDP per capita in 2017 has reached 73.2 percent of the West German level, and the gap is shrinking. According to Neugebauer, it’s not just those who are suffering economically who vote for the AfD, but also those who resent unification because it left them feeling like second-class citizens. “They don’t feel socially excluded, but politically excluded.”

Furthermore, the AfD can do well because of a lack of an anchoring of democratic ideals. “Representative democracy, the permanent negotiating in order to have compromises that do not make people really happy, accepting people who have completely different convictions—we have the impression that East Germans find this harder than West Germans,” says Lengfeld. “Although it’s now 30 years since unification, it may be that it is really a phenomenon that needs practice over two, three, perhaps, four generations.”

Same Old Prejudices

At the same time, with the low levels of party affiliation and high volatility, it cannot be said that all those who vote AfD necessarily back all their policies. “If more than 25 percent of the people who vote in the elections in Saxony vote for the AfD, that is not 25 percent right-wing extremists. Many are normal people, and if you dismiss them all right-wing extremists and exclude them, then you would damage democracy,” says Lengfeld.

As long as the AfD adheres to the constitution, it’s important to accept it as part of the political landscape. “It’s better that protest against the established parties is visible, then that it remains invisible and thus represents a real threat to the future of a representative democracy.”

Rennefanz, meanwhile, warns against vilifying the entire former East on the basis of the higher level of support for the AfD. “We tend to use this word ‘East Germany’ for everything as if ‘East Germany’ is some homogeneous entity.” She points to significant differences between north and south, between cities and small villages, between those states bordering Poland, which are home to mining communities that are suffering from the closure of brown-coal mines, and more affluent cities like Jena, Leipzig, or Potsdam.

“If you don’t know this or never talk to people there… then you start to think they are all Nazis, they are all AfD voters,” Rennefanz says. “I feel like we’re always going in a circle and we’re not moving very far. It always seems that the same prejudices are being replicated, and the only ones who seem to have learned from the past are these West German politicians from the AfD like [AfD national leader Alexander] Gauland or Höcke, which is really quite sad.”

N.B. This article was updated on September 2 to include the election results in Brandenburg and Saxony.

The post Politics of Resentment appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Thomas Peter

Is it unsafe for Jewish men to wear the traditional kippah (or yarmulke) cap in public in modern Germany? Or should Germans of all religions wear it proudly, as a sign of solidarity?

The fact that the German government official tasked with combating anti-Semitism represented both positions within a week shows how issue has, in recent years, become more relevant for all the wrong reasons.

The official, Felix Klein, warned of rising anti-Semitism on May 25, saying, “I cannot advise Jews to wear the kippah all the time and everywhere in Germany.” He blamed “society’s increasing brutalization and loss of inhibition,” adding that he had “unfortunately changed his position” on this issue in recent times.

The criticism came quickly. Jewish organizations have issued similar warnings in the past, but hearing it from a representative of the state charged with public safety was different. Michel Friedman, a former vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said that “the government is apparently failing to make [freedom of religion] possible for all Jewish citizens.” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin also got involved, saying Klein’s statement was a “capitulation” and “admission that Jews on German soil are again not safe”.

An Official Wake-up Call

By May 27, Antisemitismus-Beauftragter Klein was explaining himself to the tabloid newspaper BILD, clarifying that his warning was meant to “shake up the public” and make clear the need for action. He received some support from the current president of the Jewish council, Josef Schuster: “It has been a fact for quite some time that Jews in some big cities are potentially exposed to danger if they are recognizable as Jews.”

Klein’s week in the news culminated with an appeal for Germans to wear a kippah in solidarity. He called on citizens to show their support by attending a counter-protest in Berlin against a planned march for Al-Quds Day, a “holiday” called into being by Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1970s in order to protest Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory—Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem. Every year in Berlin, demonstrators display both anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic signs and, with Hezbollah sympathizers and even a few neo-Nazis in their midst, shout about their hate for Jews. It is illegal in Germany to burn flags or advertise for Hezbollah, but a ban on the protest would probably not hold up in court.

The police counted about 1,000 demonstrators at this year’s march, chanting slogans like “Child murderer Israel.” Opposite the Al-Quds marchers stood about 300 counter-demonstrators, with Israeli pop music blasting through their speakers.

A Sense of Insecurity

The official statistics back up the sense of insecurity in the Jewish community. While politically motivated crime was down from 2017, it was still at its third-highest level since 2001, when the statistic was introduced. The police recorded 62 violent anti-Semitic acts in 2018, up from 37 the previous year. The violence was only a small percentage of more than 1,800 violent anti-Semitic crimes, a category that includes hate speech or signs displaying banned symbols like the swastika.

The right wing of German society is primarily responsible for these anti-Semitic crimes. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer stated in May that almost 90 percent of these acts could be attributed to “right-wing crime”—as Foreign Minister Heiko Maas commented, anti-Semitism in Germany is obviously not an “import product.” The populist right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which questions Germany’s culture of atonement for the Holocaust, is on the rise in the East; the people of Chemnitz, a city in Saxony formerly known as Karl Marx City, have in the last year alone witnessed both right-wing groups making Hitler salutes before attacking foreigners and the public celebration of a professed neo-Nazi at a football match.

But neo-Nazis are far from the only culprits; Islamic anti-Semitism is also a factor. Emblematic of Jews’ growing insecurity, a video of a Palestinian asylum-seeker from Syria whipping a kippah-wearing man with a belt in Berlin’s tony Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood went viral in 2018. A recent study by the Foundation for Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future found that anti-Semitic attitudes and behavior are disproportionately strongly represented among Muslim minorities in western Europe. Crucially, though, the study did not find a “meaningful relationship between the Middle-Eastern migrants and the extent and form of anti-Semitism in western Europe”.

That doesn’t necessarily mean there is no Islamist element to the threat in some big German cities, as the Berlin Al-Quds march demonstrates. Two Jews were attacked at that demonstration in 2018. There were millions of Muslims in Germany well before the refugee crisis of 2015. Benjamin Steinitz of the anti-Semitism research center RIAS has argued that there are  motives “from a Muslim context” and far-left and far-right motives for the crimes, as well “daily statements from the middle of society.”

Who Drew the Swastika?

Some German conservatives, especially the AfD, are eager to emphasize the Muslim element of anti-Semitism and obscure broader society’s role in order to score political points. But critics make a good point about the questionable reliability of the statistics Seehofer quoted to say right-wingers were “90 percent” responsible. For example, the Berlin police has admitted that it attributes cases without a clear motive to right-wingers. (When the crime is painting a swastika, this is somewhat understandable.) Klein himself told the New York Times that the methodology was flawed and he has asked the government to change it.

“The right strategy”, Klein says, “is to denounce any form of anti-Semitism.” In other words, for those treating belt whip wounds or scrubbing racist insults from their doors, it is less important who did it than that they be stopped.

The post How to Wear a Kippah in Germany appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

At the height of the German government’s latest coalition struggle, infratest dimap, a well-respected polling institute based in Berlin, dropped a bombshell. For the first time ever, the right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a party turning ever more xenophobic, nationalist, and revisionist, has overtaken the Social Democrats (SPD) in a nation-wide poll. With 18 percent of the votes, it now appears to be second only to Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU block.

“The SPD overtaken, now we’re targeting the CDU,” one of the AfD’s leaders, Alice Weidel, gloated on Facebook.

The SPD is being hit particularly hard. According to infratest dimap, it is now down to 17 percent. But all three coalition parties in Merkel’s government are being hammered for the power games they’ve been indulging in over the past several months. The latest example is the squabble over Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the domestic intelligence service; the controversy has badly tarnished the government’s reputation.

It’s a convoluted story, but let’s try to keep it short: it started when Maassen, a critic of Merkel’s open-door policy for refugees in 2015, appeared disloyal to the chancellor in a newspaper interview he gave in early September. His boss, interior minister Horst Seehofer, who fiercely dislikes Merkel and her liberal policies, protected and possibly even encouraged him.

Beware the Bavarian Election

Merkel should have gotten rid of Maassen, but she didn’t dare to: his patron Seehofer is head of the CSU, Merkel’s Bavarian sister party, which is under huge pressure ahead of a regional election in Bavaria on October 14. Seehofer could very well have decided to break up the Berlin coalition.

So instead, Merkel’s junior partner, the SPD stepped in and demanded Maassen’s head for being too soft on the right-wing extremists. However, in a first coalition crisis meeting in mid-September, SPD party leader Andrea Nahles committed a major strategic error: she agreed to have Maassen promoted to state secretary in the interior ministry, just to get rid of him as head of the domestic intelligence service.

What ensued was a huge outcry not only from SPD members but from Germans across the political spectrum—many of them earning far less in total than the pay hike of €2500 a month that Maassen would have received with his promotion.

Nahles backtracked, apologized publicly for her lack of judgment, and asked Merkel and Seehofer to reconsider the Maassen decision. On September 23, the leaders of the three parties met again and decided that Maassen would be transferred to the interior minister as a special advisor without any promotion or pay raise.

Even more remarkably, Merkel also said sorry for getting it wrong. “We thought too little of what people rightly think when they hear about a promotion,” the chancellor said, adding uncharacteristically, “I very much regret that this could happen.” Only Seehofer—the man behind two major crises in only six months that this coalition has been in government—saw no reason to say sorry.

Neither apology nor lack thereof is likely to make any of the three parties regain the trust of the public in a hurry. If elections were to take place this Sunday, Merkel’s conservative block would only be getting 28 percent of the vote—their worst result ever.

Still, the CDU/CSU remains Germany’s largest political force, giving it first chance at the chancellery even if coalition building is becoming ever more complicated. For the SPD, it’s a very different story. According to infratest dimap, Germany’s oldest political party with a proud history of more than 150 years has slipped to third place only just before the Greens.

Exactly 20 years ago, the Social Democrats got Gerhard Schröder elected as chancellor with more than 40 percent of the vote. Now, the chance of ever regaining the chancellery seems remote. The SPD is torn between an urgent wish to leave a coalition government that has caused it so much pain, and an enormous fear of what new elections might mean for the party.

In this decline, the SPD is following the same downward trend that social democratic parties across Europe have witnessed, from France’s Parti Socialiste under Francois Hollande and Italy’s Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party to Greece, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic. Everywhere, Social Democrats have failed to offer answers to the fears caused by globalization and migration, increasing inequality, rising rents, and low pensions.

Anti-Establishment Message

Parties like the AfD don’t have an answer either (except to keep migrants out), but given the weakness of Merkel’s government, they don’t have to provide solutions. Every single hour that Merkel, Seehofer, and Nahles spent on the Maassen affair helped to reinforce their anti-establishment message.

At the same time, AfD politicians have become very skillful at creating just the right amount of public outrage over their xenophobic and revisionist statements. They are radical enough to keep politicians, the media, and the electorate talking about their message, but not so much that it would rattle their own political base.

Of course, the other party leaders aren’t blind or deaf to the AfD’s success. After the Maassen affair was finally resolved, Angela Merkel pledged to do everything possible to get her government to concentrate on substantive issues. Lars Klingbeil, secretary general of the SPD, even called for a completely new working mode in the coalition.

Good intentions, however, won’t replace the trust that has been lost. Two out of three Germans, another polling institute reported, do not believe that the leaders of Merkel’s coalition will ever work together again in good faith.

The post Angela Merkel’s Coalition Squabbles Boost AfD appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/ Hannibal Hanschke

There is little to be seen of Angela Merkel these days. Of course, she receives visitors, and she is also traveling quite a bit. But in terms of shaping the news and setting the agenda, the German chancellor has retreated from the limelight, and her foes and critics—including officials from her own party and administration—are growing bolder.

No place represents Merkel’s loss of authority more acutely than Chemnitz, a city of 240,000 in Saxony. There, three young men from Syria and Iraq—admitted to Germany because of Merkel’s 2015 refugee policy—are suspected of stabbing a German-Cuban man to death at the end of August. After the killing, thousands of people marched through the city in protest, among them several far-right groups. Neo-Nazis chased and beat up dark-skinned foreigners, while others attacked journalists or showed the forbidden Hitler salute.

A horrified Merkel condemned the “hunt” (Hetzjagd in German) on foreigners. But Saxony’s state premier Michael Kretschmer, a politician of Merkel’s own Christian Democratic Party (CDU), publicly contradicted her. There had been “no mob, no Hetzjagd, and no pogrom,” Kretschmer said after a visit to Chemnitz. He did promise that demonstrators who had become “abusive” would be punished.

Kretschmer, at least, is an elected official, and as prime minister of Saxony, he is not under Merkel’s jurisdiction. But just after his intervention, one of the federal government’s top civil servants joined the chorus. Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the Germany’s domestic spy agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), gave an astonishing interview to the mass-circulation Bild tabloid.

No Proof?

In the interview, Maassen said that his service had no reliable information that any hunt had taken place in Chemnitz. Nor did they have proof that a video showing right-wing extremists pursuing and hitting foreigners was authentic. “According to my cautious assessment, there are good reasons to believe that this may be targeted misinformation, possibly to distract the public from the murder committed in Chemnitz,” Maassen said.

Maassen had not informed the chancellery before the interview—neither of his doubts about the events in Chemnitz, nor of his intention to make them public. His immediate superior, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, another outspoken critic of Merkel’s refugee policy, at first backed Maassen, but later did ask him to provide proof.

It’s the second time within weeks that Maassen’s impartiality and ability to serve as BfV chief has been called into question: a former member of the right-wing, populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) claimed that Maassen had advised the party on how to avoid being put under surveillance by his domestic intelligence agency. Maassen has denied doing so, but opposition lawmakers and some journalists have accused him of harboring a too-cozy relationship with Germany’s far-right. The daily Handelsblatt reported this week about alleged leaks to the AfD from within Maassen’s service.

On September 10, the head of the domestic intelligence service finally submitted a brief report to the interior ministry and the chancellery. It was major climb-down, according to news reports: Maassen was apparently forced to explain that he had no reason to doubt the authenticity of the video, but that it shouldn’t have been so readily believed without verifying its origin.

What sounds like a rather involved story about semantics and bureaucracy has two possible interpretations. The first is reasonably innocent: Maassen, who has long been worried about the security risks that Germany imported by allowing hundreds of thousands of young men into the country, simply made use of the Chemnitz incident to express his service’s unease. In this case, Maassen may still have to step down, but the affair would stop there.

In the second version, Maassen would have acted with at least some encouragement from his boss, Horst Seehofer. In this case, it wouldn’t just be about a rebellious and overreaching civil servant, but about a power struggle at the heart of Merkel’s government. Seehofer was the politician behind the last rebellion against the chancellor, too. Just before the summer break, he threatened to use his authority as interior minister to close off the border for refugees registered elsewhere in the EU, forcing Merkel to go, cap in hand, to beg for concessions from her EU colleagues.

The Bavarian Angle

In addition to leading the interior ministry, Horst Seehofer is also head of the CSU, the conservative Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democrats. It is facing regional elections in Bavaria on October 14, and the CSU, which has governed the state for more than 60 years, is doing badly in the polls. If that trend is confirmed in the elections, Seehofer’s party will need a coalition partner to continue governing, which, in Bavarian terms, would be a huge humiliation.

More importantly from Merkel’s perspective, Seehofer will almost certainly have to step down as head of his party if the elections go wrong for the CSU. Down the road, this may rid her of an increasingly unpleasant cabinet member. But in the short term, it means that Seehofer has little left to lose. And he has made no secret of the fact that he dislikes Merkel personally and considers her refugee policy a dreadful mistake. “I cannot work with that woman anymore,” Seehofer said in June.

It is unlikely that Seehofer will actively bring the chancellor down. Time is running short until the Bavarian elections, and Seehofer knows that voters would not thank the CSU for such a step. But he is forcing Merkel to tread extremely carefully, paralyzing the government and making it blatantly obvious how little power the chancellor has left.

Will she be able to recover her grip after October 14? That is certainly possible, though Merkel would need to become much more active and decisive than she has been since her re-election in 2017. But otherwise, bit by bit, her authority will continue to erode. In that case, few people would bet on her completing her current four-year term.

It’s an eventuality that the Social Democrats, her junior partner in government, seem to have factored into their policies already. Over the past several weeks, they have presented far-reaching proposals for new laws—a much more generous pensions system, for instance, or strict rent control for most cities—that are far more suitable to an opposition party or an election campaign than for being part of a stable coalition government.

The post Open Season appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Matthias Rietschel

Back in 2000, Kurt Biedenkopf, then prime minister of the federal state of Saxony, made a peculiar statement. Saxonians, said this experienced West German politician who had moved east after the fall of the Berlin wall, had “shown themselves to be completely immune against extreme rightist temptations.” Biedenkopf was wrong. And by banking on denial, he contributed to making things worse.

This week’s right-wing riots that shook Chemnitz, Saxony’s third largest city, have roots reaching well back into the 1990s. That period was one of huge disruption for East Germans, calling into doubt much of what they had lived and worked for. It was also the time when neo-Nazi and right-wing extremists started to spread out their networks and make inroads into mainstream society.

So, what happened in Chemnitz? On August 26, a 35-year old German was knifed to death in this city of 240,000, a bleak place dominated by socialist-era high-rises and a gigantic statue of the head of Karl Marx. Police quickly arrested two refugees, a 22-year old Iraqi and a 23-year old Syrian, as the main suspects. That same evening, neo-Nazi groups took to the streets, hunting and attacking any foreigners they could find. Undermanned and under-equipped, the police mostly looked on.

Worse, the police were still badly understaffed the next day when right-wing extremists organized another march through Chemnitz. 6000 people joined in, some of them hard-core Nazis who were emboldened enough to give the Hitler salute (a crime in Germany) in front of cameras and police units. 20 people were injured in clashes between neo-Nazis and left-wing counter-demonstrators.

A Bungled Operation

Clearly, the police operation was bungled; just as clearly, Saxony has a growing problem with right-wing sympathizers within the police and justice system. Shockingly, a justice official in the state capital Dresden took a picture of the arrest warrant for the two men from Iraq and Syria, listing their full names, the names of witnesses and the judges involved. The document was then illegally spread through right-wing social networks. The official was later suspended from his duties.

In a more harmless, yet equally revealing incident in mid-August in Dresden, policemen had detained a television crew for 45 minutes during a rally of the anti-foreigner movement Pegida after one of the demonstrators had protested against being filmed. The demonstrator later turned out to be an employee of the state office of criminal investigation–he has since been suspended, too. Yet it took the Dresden police several days to officially apologized to the TV crew.

For years, Saxony has led the statistics in Germany for hate crimes against foreigners. It was also home to the NSU, a right-wing terrorist group that between 2000 and 2007 murdered nine immigrants and one policewoman. In Saxony, neo-Nazis have established powerful informal networks. Soccer fan clubs play a particular role, as do right-wing rock bands.

Successful in Saxony

There are social, economic, and psychological reasons why the German far-right is so spectacularly successful in Saxony. This once heavily industrialized region was hit particularly hard by the economic disruption which accompanied reunification. High unemployment and low wages have contributed to a widespread feeling among Saxonians of being second-class citizens in the new Germany. And when Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed nearly a million refugees to Germany in 2015, many East Germans felt even more abandoned, believing that the benefits they should have received were now being given to refugees.

Such resentment is not limited to Saxony or to eastern Germany. In many of West German cities, competition between low-income indigenous groups and refugees for apartments or childcare is much more acute. But Saxony has a long political tradition of underplaying right-wing tendencies. “Saxony does not have a significant problem with right-wing radicalism,” said then Prime Minister Stanislaw Tillich as late as 2011, echoing Biedenkopf. As a consequence, the police and justice system failed to combat neo-Nazism effectively.

Saxony’s current Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer, a member of Merkel’s CDU, follows the line of his predecessors: naturally, he does not encourage xenophobia or neo-Nazism, but neither does he clearly point out what is right and wrong. And after the riots in Chemnitz, Kretschmer said that the police had done “a super job.”

Spreading into Politics

From fringe groups, right-wing ideology has spread not only into state institutions like the police, but also into politics. It was in Saxony that the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) used to register its best results; it’s here that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) now scores highest. At the federal elections in 2017, the AfD received 27 percent of votes and emerged (by a tiny margin) as the strongest party in Saxony. Also, the AfD members of the Bundestag elected in Saxony are among the most radical in the party. The most prominent of them is Jens Maier, a judge (!) from the Dresden district court.

The enormous success of the party in eastern Germany has also accelerated the radicalization of the party as a whole. Today’s xenophobic and revisionist AfD has little in common with the conservative, anti-Euro party founded in 2013 by West German conservative economists. And as the party has become more extremist, many of its members throughout Germany have become more radical as well.

As a consequence, Germany now has a sizeable far-right party that in spite of its leadership squabbles is stable and well established. With 15 to 17 percent in the polls, it appears that the AfD is here to stay. In a European context, that would not be unusual. But for Germany with its Nazi past and the Holocaust, it’s a disturbing first.

The post Lessons from Chemnitz appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Dado Ruvic

Until the last moment of the German election that took place on September 24, large-scale, overt interference by the Kremlin was considered a real possibility. However, in the end Germans were spared the brazen meddling that marred elections in both the United States and France. Yet with the openly pro-Russian Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) strong showing securing its place in the Bundestag, Moscow has every reason to be satisfied with the outcome of the vote. In fact, data collected by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), an initiative run by the German Marshall Fund in Washington, DC, shows that Kremlin-oriented networks engaged in low-level, covert interference in Germany. Most notably, these networks actively supported AfD online by targeting the German public with the same type of disinformation they used in the United States.

Since July, ASD has been monitoring the activity of Kremlin-oriented actors on Twitter in the United States via its Hamilton 68 dashboard. Just before the German election, ASD added Artikel 38, a similar tool that monitors the activity of Kremlin-oriented Twitter accounts in Germany. The researchers at ASD trawled through thousands of followers of Russian propaganda outlets RT and Sputnik and used three metrics – influence, exposure, and in-groupness – to narrow the initial list down to 1,100 accounts, 600 in the United States and 500 in Germany, that consistently echo Moscow’s political line. The two dashboards now automatically monitor these accounts in real time and distill their content into an analyzable format.

The information derived from the dashboards reveals that topics and themes promoted in both countries were very similar. In both Germany and the US, Moscow amplifies right-wing content in an attempt to exacerbate pre-existing socio-political divisions. In Germany, Artikel 38 shows that the Kremlin’s messaging follows three broad axes: xenophobic coverage of immigrants; anti-“establishment” attacks, directed at Chancellor Angela Merkel in particular; and support for AfD. Together, the themes pushed by the network target the most salient vulnerabilities of German democracy.

Xenophobic content pervades the stories tweeted by the network. A third of the 122 URLs it promoted between September 13 and September 27 directed viewers to anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic content. The tweeted stories portray immigration as a security threat and seek to stir Germans’ fears of an “Islamization” of their country. Out of 37 xenophobic stories promoted by the network, 23 portray immigrants as either criminals or terrorists. One leitmotiv concerns rapes allegedly committed by refugees. Other stories imply a link between (Muslim) immigration and terrorism. For instance, one article reported that four Syrian refugees with links to the terror group Jabhat al-Nusra were on trial for murder before a German court.

Stories that appeal to xenophobic instincts are often linked to another type of coverage that criticizes the “establishment” forces responsible for the influx of supposedly dangerous and irredeemably alien refugees. Anti-establishment content primarily focuses on Merkel and on the mainstream media outlets accused of dancing to her tune. Over the studied period, 15 URLs criticize, or even criminalize, Merkel for her way of handling Germany’s refugee crisis. These posts claim that by illegally admitting large numbers of refugees, Merkel not only sacrificed Germans’ security, but also started the steady dismantlement of German democracy and rule of law. A particular link that was among the top ten stories for three consecutive days explains why “Merkel belongs behind bars.”

Other pieces focus on “Merkel’s accomplices.” Most of them target the mainstream media, accused of censoring reports critical of Merkel and her refugee policy. Two of the most retweeted stories reported that the German public broadcaster ZDF had uninvited the relative of one of the victims of the terrorist attack that occurred in Berlin last December from a show with the chancellor. Other articles pushed by the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network in Germany focus on alleged instances of censorship and on cover-ups by state authorities, most notably by Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and Justice Minister Heiko Maas.

By amplifying xenophobic and anti-establishment views, the network pushes the same narratives as AfD. But the network goes further than promoting ideas; it directly promotes the radical right-wing party. Since the launch of Artikel 38, AfD has dominated the hashtags, topics, and stories promoted by the dashboard. Over the period analyzed, #afd was the most tweeted hashtag, either the most or second-most important topic discussed, and the subject of a significant share of the articles pushed by the network. These articles, 36 altogether, serve two main purposes.

Firstly, they seek to create the image of a powerful AfD. Before Germans went to the polls, the network actively promoted pieces that suggested that the party’s support base might be far greater than expected. After September 24, the network was abuzz with posts that cheered the AfD’s “triumph” and gloated at the establishment’s poor assessment of the party’s real strength. Secondly, the articles aim to “expose” what the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network in Germany calls the establishment’s “witch-hunt” against AfD. According to this narrative, before the election, the other parties, mainstream media, and other “establishment” forces were accused of using censorship, fake scandals, and possibly election fraud to prevent AfD’s inevitable triumph. Having failed at their attempts, the “establishment” now tries to downplay AfD’s victory and threatens to fight, rather than engage, the party in parliament.

Honing the Message

While Moscow’s messaging is strikingly similar in Germany and in the US, the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network in Germany does have some idiosyncrasies. For instance, it plays on Germans’ strong concern for environmental issues and climate change. This is reflected in both the hashtags and topics tweeted by the network, which regularly reference issues like nuclear waste, EU regulations for the weed-killer glyphosate, and even the German recycling system. The natural disasters that recently struck the Americas were given sustained attention by the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network in Germany. On September 21, six of the 10 most trending hashtags related to hurricanes Harvey, Jose, Irma, and Maria. The network exploited these catastrophes to promote conspiracy theories, while a website that accuses US research institutes of weather manipulation and of using climate as a strategic weapon is frequently among the most-tweeted URLs of the network.

Beyond the small thematic idiosyncrasies, the dashboards also reveal significant differences between the German and American information environments. Some of these differences are intrinsic to the platform monitored, with Twitter being a much more powerful public opinion influencer in the US than in Germany. In the US, Twitter is a behemoth boasting approximately 70 million active users. In Germany, the social network never really caught on, and hovers at around a million active users. Activities on Twitter thus reach barely more than one percent of Germans directly. Of course, Twitter may still have an indirect effect: while most Germans get their news from traditional media, Twitter plays an outsized role in influencing journalists, who are on the platform and sometimes amplify or repeat its content.

Not only does the platform reach a far smaller audience, it is also used far more “passively” in Germany than in the United States. This is reflected in the dashboards. In Germany, the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network rarely posts more than 20,000 tweets a day, whereas in the United States, it rarely falls below the 20,000-tweet mark. This is further reflected in the fact that the content pushed by the networks sees a far smaller number of retweets in Germany than in the United States – a clear indicator that Germans interact less with messages posted by others. For instance, between September 25 and 27, the five most-tweeted posts were retweeted an average amount of 204 times in the United States versus an average of 39 times in Germany.

Another significant difference between each country’s Kremlin-oriented Twitter network is the number and weight of sources each one uses. In Germany, the content promoted by Moscow sympathizers emanates largely from a small number of single-authored fringe blogs. Large national or local media outlets are seldom referred to. To some extent, it seems that content promoted by Russia is restricted to a niche audience and is isolated from the broader public debate.

The situation is very different in the United States, where Russia has a much larger number of websites whose messages it can amplify. Small sites analogous to the German fringe blogs are more numerous and appear to draw from a larger pool of contributors. More importantly, the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network in the United States relies heavily on content from large outlets such as Breitbart and Fox News. These big organizations allow the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network to be far more embedded in the American public debate than in the German one.

Moscow adopts the same propaganda strategy on both sides of the Atlantic. It uses social media to bolster the political extremes, the far-right in particular, and extend the reach and toxicity of their divisive rhetoric. But analyzing the dashboard’s data suggests that the Kremlin’s online tactics might be better suited to the United States than to Germany. The Kremlin-oriented Twitter network reaches more people in the US, and the American public more readily engages with content pushed by Moscow. In addition, Russian online campaigns in the US can draw on large media outlets and get to people beyond the restricted confines of the far-right.

That’s not to say that Germany is immune to Kremlin interference. AfD has learned from, and largely adopted, the online tactics Moscow used to great effect in other Western democracies. Moreover, as a party in Parliament, AfD is now very likely to have a much-improved access to media channels that have real sway over the German public. If the far-right party maintains its openly Pro-Russian line in the coming months, Moscow will have a Trojan horse perfectly poised to take the German informational landscape by storm.

The post Building a Trojan Horse appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

In January 2015, Angela Merkel shocked many of her more conservative voters by declaring that “Islam is part of Germany,” echoing a 2010 declaration from former German president Christian Wulff. It wasn’t the first time she said it, but in the wake of the Islamist terrorist attacks on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris, the statement was particularly potent. Later that year, she took the fateful decision to open the country’s borders to hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria and elsewhere trapped in Hungary. Selfies of young refugees posing with the chancellor were shared around the world.

Now she appears to have changed her tone. At the annual congress of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in early December, Merkel called for a ban on full-face Muslim veils. “Here we say ‘show your face’,” Merkel said, drawing enormous applause from the roughly 1000 delegates at the party congress. “So full veiling is not appropriate here. It should be prohibited wherever legally possible.”

With Merkel’s approval, the CDU also called for quicker deportation for immigrants whose asylum request had been denied. It welcomed the EU’s agreements with Turkey and countries in North Africa to reduce the number of refugees seeking asylum in Europe. Proposals for introducing transit zones for newly arrived refugees also won support.

Obviously, this has much to do with next year’s federal election. In September 2017, Angela Merkel will try to win a fourth term in office. It will be a very difficult campaign, with the populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) a dangerous new competitor on the right.

For years, Merkel successfully pushed her party toward liberal positions, including the approval of gay rights (though stopping short of supporting gay marriage) and the end of conscription. Now she is coming under enormous pressure from her own grass roots to show more of a conservative, law-and-order profile.

Populists on the March

This territory is already painfully familiar to other world leaders who have seen votes shift to anti-immigration and anti-Muslim movements. Britain’s Brexit vote is one example, but so is Donald Trump’s success in the United States. Next year’s elections in France and the Netherlands are also predicted to bring solid gains for the populists.

Much of this political shift is fueled by fear of globalization. According to a recent study by the Bertelsmann Foundation, it is the single most important motivation for supporters of right-wing populist movements. In this context, fear of globalization also translates into the belief that immigration has spiraled out of control. The chaos surrounding the arrival of nearly a million refugees to Germany in 2015 helps populist leaders to make this point.

As governments in Europe despair of being able to explain the complex issues surrounding globalization to their voters, banning burqas has become a favorite gesture. France’s Francois Fillon, newly chosen to be the conservative party’s candidate for the presidential elections next spring, endorses banning the full veil. The Dutch parliament just voted to ban women wearing a burqa from using public transport.

So is Merkel jumping on the populist bandwagon? She has certainly come to appreciate the power of public sentiment about immigration and Islam. She also understands that it has become a matter of political survival for herself and her party to keep the numbers of new refugees in the country relatively low.

Yet the exact wording she chose for her party speech is significant. Banning full veils “wherever legally possible” is what Merkel said. This means showing your face when you have to appear in court or when the police check your identity – not being hassled for wearing a veil on the beach or in the subway. Merkel also publicly criticized a proposal endorsed by just over half of the party delegates to ban double citizenship for immigrants.

Merkel’s Balancing Act

What we are seeing is a balancing act: on the one side, the chancellor needs to show that she takes concerns over immigration seriously; on the other, she simply cannot disown her own past policies. She will not give up her own principles for a populist campaign; after nearly twelve years at the helm, that would be too high a price to pay for a fourth term in office.

With any luck, Merkel’s stance may actually appeal to German voters who, after all, are also ambivalent on the refugee issue. In a recent poll conducted by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, four in ten voters said that Germany was being subverted by Islam. But 56 percent said it was a good thing that their country had taken in the refugees. This is backed by the many private initiatives which are still very active in helping refugees settle into their new life in Germany.

With ten months to go until next year’s elections, Merkel’s speech at the party congress certainly was significant. Nobody gets this far in politics without being attuned to public sentiment, and Merkel is not above paying lip service to populist sentiments. But don’t expect a shift in substance.

The post Paying Lip Service appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.