Germany and the antifascist firewall that never was
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Timo Al-Farooq
- Today 13:50
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Germany’s so-called antifascist "firewall" against the far-right has collapsed, but mainstream parties have in fact long been complicit in militarism, anti-refugee policies, and unconditional support for "Israel"—all hallmarks of modern fascism.
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Merz's unprecedented move to join forces with the AfD can only be seen as being meant to desensitise voters to the first post-WWII far-right participation in government. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Zeinab El-Hajj)
There is a word that has been on everyone’s lips in recent days and weeks in Germany: "Brandmauer." Meaning firewall, it refers to the consensus among the country’s mainstream political parties that forbids any cooperation with far-right parties.
That non-codified agreement was thrown overboard recently when the opposition centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU), poised to win the upcoming snap federal elections on 23 February, proposed an anti-immigrant parliamentary motion that passed with support from the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Though the draft law was ultimately voted down by the Bundestag on 31 January, CDU leader Friedrich Merz’s decision to burn down the antifascist firewall without batting an eye bodes ill for what is to come after the elections.
With the CDU currently polling at 30% and the AfD at 22%, this would give both parties a comfortable majority to form a coalition government under a Chancellor Merz between what many from the left see as two parties with eerily aligning ideologies when it comes to migration.
While Merz continues to pay lip service to the intactness of the anti-AfD firewall, promising delegates at his party’s congress last Monday that there would be "no cooperation" and "no minority government" with the AfD, Merz’s unprecedented move to join forces with a party that Germany’s Verfassungsschutz intelligence agency has classified as "presumably right-wing extremist" can only be seen as a dry run meant to desensitise voters to the prospect of what could well be post-WW2 Germany’s first federal government with far right participation.
The hypocrisy of anti-AfD protests
Following the CDU’s historic paradigm shift towards further normalising the AfD by soliciting its support in parliament, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets across Germany.
Under the banner "Aufstand der Anständigen" (Uprising of the decent), 250,000 people, according to the organisers, descended upon Berlin’s government district on 2 February.
While mainstream German media is celebrating these numbers as proof positive of the broader electorate's unwavering democratic and antiracist convictions, these protests are highly controversial because they selectively blame the opposition CDU and AfD for reactionary policies the governing centre-left coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Liberals (FDP) has been implementing for years.
The firewall against the AfD might have crumbled, but it was never very sturdy to begin with due to one key engineering flaw: mainstream parties’ complicity in the unstoppable rise of the far right.
Many of those scandalised by Merz’s transgression fail to see the hypocrisy of protesting against the future possibility of fascism from the right, but remaining markedly silent on the present fascist re-modelling of the German state spearheaded by the liberal elites in power.
Germany's unfettered militarism in the wake of the Ukraine war, its unapologetic material and moral support for "Israel’s" fifteen-month-long genocide in Gaza (which has now shape-shifted into the post-ceasefire ethnic cleansing of the Occupied West Bank), and accompanying crackdowns on Palestine solidarity, as well as the passing of draconian anti-refugee laws, are all policies vigorously pursued by so-called liberals and progressives.
Why get riled up about Merz’s anti-immigrant overtures when Chancellor Olaf Scholz proudly proclaimed in 2023 to "deport on a grand scale" and his Green party Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock described the European Union’s controversial 2024 migration reform, which allows for asylum-seekers who are waiting for their applications to be approved, to be held in detention centres at the EU’s external borders for up to 12 weeks as a testament to "humanity and order?"
Antiracist, yet pro-Zionist
A prime example of liberal Germany’s selective outrage is the utter lack of indignation at an anti- democratic resolution passed on the same day the AfD-supported CDU motion to toughen migration policy which shocked German complacency into action. Entitled "Anti-Semitism and hostility towards Israel at schools and universities", it is an unprecedented state-sponsored attack on the constitutionally enshrined autonomy of universities and academic freedom in the service of "Israel".
Albeit non-binding, the resolution calls for, among other things, the expulsion of students who participate in activities that promote what Germany’s Zionist consensus has termed "Israel-related antisemitism", a designation based on the infamous IHRA working definition of antisemitism which views any criticism of "Israel" as inherently anti-Jewish. These activities could include anything from calling for the boycott of "Israel" to protesting against its violent settler colonialism.
Yet antidemocratic developments like this latest legislative expression of anti-Palestinian racism made under the guise of fighting Jew-hatred (the second in three months) have failed to inform the antiracist motivation of so-called decent citizens who are taking to the streets in their hundreds of thousands against the spectre of right-wing authoritarianism embodied by an AfD in government.
Nor has Germany’s centre-left coalition government’s steadfast support for the most fascist Israeli government in the Zionist entity’s history while it conducted the world’s first live-streamed genocide, described by Palestinian American legal scholar Noura Erakat in an X post as the "cruelest phase" of a 76-year-long Nakba, led to any kind of self-critical reflection among these so-called antifascist protesters, many of whom are Social Democratic and Green party loyalists.
On the contrary: The Greens boasted a record number of 5000 new membership applications in five days following Merz’s political sacrilege of collaborating with the AfD.
As the Europe Palestine Network, an Instagram account with 120,000 followers, put it candidly in a comment on the mass protest in Berlin, "We wish all these people stood up against the genocide and supported Palestine too. They are against AfD and not necessarily against Israel and the crimes it commits in Gaza."
Germany’s much lauded "Brandmauer": the antifascist firewall that never was.
