Planned Deportations

The moves to deport the activists are strikingly reminiscent of the attempted deportations of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil or Tufts University’s Rumeysa Ozturk. The Berlin activists may have been spared the horrifying inhumanity of being disappeared by plainclothes cops. But their experience represents an equally chilling departure from democratic norms.

The basis for Berlin’s deportation orders stem from separate incidents around protests in the German capital. The accusations include insulting a police officer and chanting the recently banned slogan “from the River to the Sea” — both of which are illegal but typically punishable by fines. Participation in a campus occupation at Freie Universität as well as unspecified accusations of antisemitism and support for Hamas were also listed.

The Christian Democrat (CDU) domestic policy spokesperson for Berlin’s state parliament, Burkard Degger, told conservative daily Welt, “These are criminals and it’s important to set an example when it comes to the ‘so-called pro-Palestine’ demonstrations, which are in reality pro-Hamas demonstrations.” Again, any evidence of criminal convictions or of supporting Hamas — beyond potentially having participated in a globally popular chant — would help provide the impression that these moves were even vaguely aligned with due process. No such proof has been forthcoming.

The deportation orders were reportedly brought forward despite significant objections from within Berlin’s immigration agency, highlighting the cauldron of roiling anti-Palestinian pressure the city has become under Christian Democrat mayor Kai Wegner. Wegner has taken a hard line on pro-Palestinian speech, ruthlessly cracking down on student protests, academic lectures, and political conferences.

Wegner’s city hall, led by the CDU in coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), takes an especially hard line on Palestine. Yet it is by no means an outlier in Germany. Indeed, after the February 23 federal elections, CDU leader Friedrich Merz is expected to form a national-level coalition with the SPD, and Berlin could well be a glimpse of what’s to come. Most notably, ongoing CDU and SPD coalition talks have weighed stripping German citizenship from any dual passport holders deemed “terrorist supporters, antisemites or extremists.”

That the term “Hamas supporter” is used by German press and politicians with reckless abandon should give serious pause to anyone using it as a basis for removing citizenship. The same goes for the frequency of accusations of antisemitism, which given Germany’s commitment to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism often boil down to even the blandest critiques of Israel. German authorities are creating a set of second-class, essentially temporary, foreign-born citizens who can have their rights stripped at any moment due to political disagreements. That this is done in the name of protecting Jews is both dangerous and a serious affront to historical understanding.

Not Very Useful Idiots

Deeply conservative Merz — so committed to fighting discrimination that he’s just happened to have called Ukrainian refugees “welfare tourists” and Germany’s Muslim children “little pashas” — could only be expected to push reforms that could be used as a cudgel against immigrants. Despite heated debates around coalition talks, and a number of global and domestic crises, Merz’s party colleagues chose to prioritize calling for banning the kaffiyeh from being worn in Bundestag sessions. The CDU may be particularly rabid, but across Germany’s political landscape most forces apply the same “antisemitism” label to the simple assertion that Palestinians deserve to live.

Whether it’s cynical or simply naive, Germany’s center has protected a murderous status quo in the Middle East while propagating a series of increasingly authoritarian reforms at home.

Most egregiously, Germany’s commitment to what many leaders call its “Staatsräson” of defending Israel’s security has ensured its complicity in the Gaza War. Weapons shipments continued despite evidence of the mounting genocide. Germany’s outgoing centrist coalition government occasionally took breaks from abstaining from UN cease-fire votes long enough to limply criticize the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Yet the Green Party foreign minister Annalena Baerbock went as far as making a case for civilian buildings losing their protected status under the law.

Domestically, Olaf Scholz’s centrist “traffic light” coalition pushed through an antisemitism resolution that passed with wide political support in the Bundestag late last year. As with Berlin’s political deportations and the potential citizenship revocations, though the resolution is ostensibly about protecting Jewish life in Germany, it focuses almost entirely on Israel. That many of those protesting the war in Gaza are Jewish appears yet to have dawned on German lawmakers. That, or they are willfully ignoring the fact that their limited definition of antisemitism and conflation of Jewishness with the state of Israel is itself antisemitic. Neither option is good.

There’s a reason why the AfD can join in the blind commitment to supporting Israel at any costs. Last year’s antisemitism resolution specifically mentions antisemitism rising due to migration from the Middle East and Northern Africa. This party, whose most prominent figures include Beatrix von Storch — the granddaughter of Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, Adolf Hitler’s finance minister and Nazi Germany’s last head of state — and Thuringia state chair Björn Höcke, who’s been fined twice for using Nazi slogans, has been leading the charge in redefining Germany’s internal threat to Jewish life as a problem of “imported antisemitism.”

German centrists have seemingly not stopped to wonder why a party with Nazis in its ranks might be gleefully voting for their legislation. In fact, it was the AfD that initially pushed for banning the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement outright in 2019 that led to more widespread support for a Bundestag resolution deeming the movement antisemitic.

Eroding Democracy, While Raising the Alarm About Fascism

Even as Germany’s political mainstream has been actively restricting the right to protest, eroding academic freedom, and preparing to revoke citizenship and deport foreign residents for political reasons, its other major political project has been breathlessly bewailing the uninhibited rise of Germany’s far right. The AfD’s growth is, indeed, disturbing given Germany’s history. But centrist leaders like Scholz marching in protest and calling the party a threat to democracy as Germany’s centrist parties unite to undermine the country’s democratic norms is hard to square.

It rather mirrors the US Democrats’ incessant warnings about the threat of Donald Trump during Joe Biden’s administration — as if they had no tools to use in government that might have given people a reason to vote for them out of anything other than fear. In the German case, the centrist political-media space’s repression of pro-Palestinian speech has paved the way for significantly worse crackdowns down the line. The convergence between the United States and Germany using any kind of support for Palestine as a bludgeon against immigrants remains little discussed. But at least the latest abductions in the United States have gotten a bit of press coverage and some pushback, which is harder to find in Germany.

Not only have these tactics proven toothless against the AfD, which doubled its vote share under Scholz and looks set to soon eclipse the CDU as the most popular party in national polling, it’s actively helped the party. An understanding of combating antisemitism that focuses solely on supporting Israel — even as a brutal Israeli regime is openly attempting to ethnically cleanse and redevelop Gaza — and shifts the entire burden of German antisemitism onto immigrants is a gross, cynical misreading of Germany’s historic responsibility. But it also reflects a navel-gazing stupidity that allows a nation’s leadership to adopt far-right talking points and political positions while constantly complaining about the far right.

If the AfD is as dangerous as centrist leaders say, what do they expect these right-wing extremists to do with the new authoritarian powers they’ve introduced? Given the number of real antisemites in the AfD, Germany’s misguided commitment to stomping out pro-Palestinian speech is laying the groundwork for creating serious danger for Germany’s Jewish population, in addition to the other minority groups they’re already more than happy to threaten.