Following the right-wing, anti-Islam AfD party’s historic electoral successes in three Eastern German states in September, racialised communities in Germany are on edge and seriously questioning their future in a country which is increasingly making them feel unwelcome and unsafe again.

The auspicious Willkommenskultur (Welcoming culture) espoused in the early 2000s and reiterated in 2015 amidst Europe’s so-called refugee crisis is now all but dead, replaced by a toxic, anti-migration discourse reminiscent of the 1990s.

During that dark and daunting time, mainstream political parties and the media freely engaged in anti-immigrant agitation, thereby emboldening violent pogroms against asylum seekers and deadly attacks on members of Germany’s large Turkish community.

The fact that the terrifying “Deutschland den Deutschen, Ausländer raus!” (Germany for the Germans, foreigners out) mob chant of that long believed to be bygone era has resurfaced verbatim in the supposedly progressive, multicultural German reality of today and can be heard in train stations, football stadiums, and domestic vacation spots shows just how frightening the situation has become for those of immigrant background in the country. 

The 'poison of Islam'

The image of the “ugly German” goes back as far as the First World War. But it was Germany’s Nazi era crimes and the demagogic public appearances of its hate-mongering leaders during which they would routinely demonise the Jewish people that were to solidify this external perception.

That the German ugliness of yore is alive and kicking in 2024 could be seen in a now-deleted official video shared on social media by Bavaria’s Interior Ministry. Titled “The Salafism trap”, the animated clip’s crude depiction of a devilish Muslim man laughing in an evil manner as he devours a young hijab-wearing woman because she is interested in wearing makeup is hauntingly reminiscent of the antisemitic cartoons printed in Nazi Germany’s propaganda newspaper Der Stürmer.

The panic among mainstream political parties is clearly palpable as they are now outdoing themselves in proving to a xenophobic electorate that they are just as reactionary as the AfD in order to get into pole position for next year’s elections.

This includes the centre-left federal coalition government. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser’s decision to reinstate checks at all German land borders, in violation of the Europe-wide free movement rules codified in the Schengen Agreement, is just one example of what Konstantinos Arvantitis, deputy chairman of The Left in the European Parliament group, described as “social democratic fodder for extreme right rhetoric” in a recent interview with left-wing newspaper Junge Welt.

Just how far left the ugliness of xenophobia and obsessive-compulsive othering stretches in Germany is embodied by one Katharina Dröge, the Green Party’s leader in the Bundestag, who spoke of the “poison of Islam” during a plenary session in September. In just three words, she managed to excommunicate the country’s 5.5 million Muslims from the members-only club of German nationhood.

Even if one believed her unconvincing assertions that she misspoke and meant to say “Islamism”, not “Islam”, her Freudian slip is highly revealing of how deeply anti-Muslim bigotry is embedded within the allegedly enlightened minds of self-proclaimed progressive white Germans.

Persecution of Palestinians

Nowhere has the resurrection of the “ugly German” been more conspicuous than in Zionist Germany’s maltreatment of Palestinians and their allies in the service of "Israel’s" Western-backed genocidal war on Gaza, which the expansionist Tel Aviv regime has now extended to the Occupied West Bank and Lebanon.

A year of brutal police crackdowns on Palestine solidarity protests, authoritarian state persecution of anti-genocide activists, and a woefully Eurocentric German media’s unremitting demonisation of Palestinians and their allies as de-facto enemies of the state, have exposed the true, hideous face of a nation which has allegedly atoned for its past crimes.

The country that perfected racial fanaticism during the Third Reich is once again doing its fascist history justice, this time around within the parameters of nominal liberal democracy and with a different victim in its crosshairs. 

Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims are widely regarded as the new Jews of Germany, a nation which grossly exaggerates the threat antisemitism poses to its most privileged and protected minority, while at the same time routinely downplaying the virulent Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism rampant within German society.

Leaving Germany before it’s too late

In light of these deeply worrisome developments, many among Germany's racialised communities are seriously considering turning their backs on their adopted homeland in favour of greener, safer pastures. 

According to a recent study conducted by the German government’s Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), a quarter of people with an immigrant background are thinking of leaving Germany for good. 9.3 % of those respondents have already made concrete plans to emigrate. 

The “ugly German” is back and here to stay. Therefore, it is high time to do what an American idiom describing a rapid departure due to imminent danger calls for: get the heck out of Dodge before it is too late.