United we fall: Germany’s fragile firewall against the far-right

Guest post by Eva Spiekermann. Eva is a DPhil Candidate at the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on European border politics and particularly the role of humanitarianism and reception in immigration control.

At the end of January, the German parliament passed a non-binding motion titled ‘five points for safe borders and the end of illegal migration’, thanks to 75 decisive votes by the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Brought forward by the CDU/CSU center-right party, this is the first time since World War II that a majority decision is purposefully built with the backing of the far-right in the German Bundestag. In this blog I offer some reflections on the meaning of this event in the German context. Coming only a few days after the Bundestag celebrated the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, this vote represents indeed a watershed moment in German democracy. Yet, as I will show, this event cannot be understood without also looking at the content of the motion which managed to gather this dangerous majority. I situate the proposal of center-right CDU/CSU within a series of anti-migrant developments in Germany under the Olaf Scholz coalition government. Finally, I ask how long the firewall against the far-right can hold up if democratic parties continue playing by its script.

The 29th of January 2025 will go down in history as a turning point in the German Bundestag. The images of AfD parliament members congratulating each other effusively after the vote speak for themselves. For the AfD this is much more than a (legally non-binding) motion. With the words of  Bernd Baumann, AfD member: ‘Here and now starts a new era. Now starts something new. And we are leading it’ (my own translation). To defend this political move Friedrich Merz (CDU/CSU), leader candidate to become Germany’s next chancellor, stressed that ‘what is right in the matter does not become wrong just because the wrong people agree’ (my own translation). Since last week it has become clear that many in Germany disagree with this sentiment. The five-point plan motion vote has sparked protests across the country, with big demonstrations calling on a clear distancing from the far-right party and its misanthropic ideology.

While the focus of the debate has been mainly on the involvement of the far-right, it is well worth taking a closer look at what exactly Friedrich Merz deems ‘right in the matter’. The five-point plan includes proposals to introduce 1) permanent controls at the German borders; 2) the rejection of all people without valid documentation directly at the border, including people claiming asylum (which would effectively legalise pushbacks and the abolition of asylum); 3) the incarceration of all people with deportation orders, as well as the ramping up of detention capacity up and down the country, and deportations ‘on a daily basis’; 4) the expanding the federal police powers to enforce deportations and more resources to the federal provinces for deportations; and finally 5) the detention without time limit of criminals and so-called ‘Gefährder’ (a blurry legal category meaning people posing a potential terrorist threat) with deportation orders. Reading through the plan, it is clear how blatantly propagandistic it is. In fact, legal scholars and refugee rights organisations have declared the plan unlawful at all levels if it were to be put into practice, most notably in breach of European Law and German Constitutional Law.

A few weeks before the national elections, adhering to legal frameworks does not appear on top of the agenda for the center-right CDU/CSU. Instead this plan and surrounding rhetoric actively feeds into a moral panic on ‘illegal migration’ in the name of national security. To use Nicholas De Genova’s term, it produces a border spectacle: one which builds on talking points of the far-right. To strengthen national borders, to openly challenge EU legislation and principles, or the mobilisation of racist tropes such as that of the ‘criminal alien’ have been at the core of the AfD platform since its founding in 2013. Friedrich Merz's passionate speech in parliament last week about ‘daily mass rapings by asylum seekers’ feeds exactly into this agenda. It is also no coincidence that the five-point plan was tabled after a knife attack on a kindergarten group killing a child and a man in the southern city of Aschaffenburg on 22 January. The attacker was an Afghan man whose asylum application had been rejected and who most obviously was psychologically disturbed. All this may well be interpreted as rhetoric, but it very clearly shows that contemporary politics in Germany is inscribed by the ‘fateful triangle’ of race, ethnicity, and nation, at the expense of the lives of all people who do not belong.

Looking back at these recent events in Germany, one could ask: is Friedrich Merz just one bad apple? After all, even former chancellor Angela Merkel, who normally keeps her composure on ongoing political events, commented on her party’s vote with the AfD as ‘wrong’. But those of us researching border control in Europe, and especially those who cross borders and endure unimaginable harm, know that the bad apple theory does not hold up. The underlying ideas inscribed in the five-point plan above may have read more like a déjà-vu, certainly for the regular readers of this blog. Iterations of the bordering practices suggested in it are in fact already common practice at Europe’s external and internal borders. Germany is no exception. Only last year the current German chancellor Olaf Scholz (center-left) promised ‘deportations on grand scale’, the coalition government introduced controls at national borders to prevent ‘islamic terrorist and cross-border criminality’, and 2024 has seen some drastic tightening of the right to asylum and freedom of movement in German law. This motion vote with the AfD must be a wake-up call for democratic parties to scrutinise their own politics and their role in propping up a migrant ‘crisis’. A firewall against the far-right can only hold up if and when ideologies to divide and rule along racial, ethnic and national lines are overcome. 

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