After Germany’s Super Sunday

Frauke Petry, leader of Alternative for Germany, on 12 February 2016'. Flickr/ Metropolico.org. Some rights reserved.

There have
been two very different immigration debates under way in Germany of late, and the
highly ambiguous results of the parliamentary elections held in three German
states on 13 March have brought both to the surface more clearly than before.

The state elections as a referendum on
immigration

The first debate
now revolves around the remarkable gains made by the far-right Alternative for
Germany (AfD) on the one hand – founded only three years ago, the party has
been launching scathing attacks on the alleged ‘open-door policy’ of Angela
Merkel’s conservative-led government – and the success, on the other, of each
state’s incumbent governor in maintaining their parties’ simple majorities, two
of whom are close allies of Merkel on the issue of immigration.

The Daily
Mail’s wishful-thinking headline ‘Crushing verdict on open-door migration’ was not an
exceptional take on the results. Those within and outside the chancellor’s
party who have favoured a stronger commitment to formally ‘capping’ the number
of asylum seekers allowed to cross the border similarly led German media
outlets to exclaim: ‘Triumph of Merkel’s critics!’ One of the most outspoken amongst
them, the leader of the AfD attracted international attention in January when
she referred to the use of firearms at the border as a last
resort against refugees.

Conversely,  the
election results can just as easily be interpreted as a ‘victory for Merkel’s centre-left
avatars’. Two
incumbent governors in particular, despite being members of the Greens and the
Social Democrats, have been actively defending Angela Merkel from critics
within her own conservative party. This seems to have gone down well with
voters – the democratic ideal of a cross-party alliance, one might think.

‘When things are reduced to two poles, we’ve
already lost’

However, this
debate feeds on irreconcilable oppositions – such as the one between ‘Merkel’s
policies won’ and ‘Merkel’s policies lost’. Bloggers, campaigners and some
journalists are drawing increasing attention to the dangers of such polarisation.
A local activist decried ‘the intolerable image of the two poles’ on Facebook:
‘Protesters and counter-protesters, concerned citizens and starry-eyed
idealists, racists and democrats … Whenever things are reduced to two poles,
we’ve already lost. And they are being reduced in that way.’ Along the same
lines, a prominent blogger and journalist observes the pugnacious ‘eitherorism’ – whereby every point of criticism
is perceived as the utmost disagreement – that often comes to burden political discussions,
especially on social media.

What is
more, the spiral of escalation between the chancellor’s supporters and the far
right is skewed, which is where the second immigration debate comes in. In
recent months the leading figures of the AfD received a degree of Trump-style media
attention that was grotesquely disproportionate to their national polling at around
10 per cent, while anyone seeking to defend Merkel’s immigration policies
suffered from a structural disadvantage. Her policies may still appear
humanitarian to some (even after the EU-Turkey deal) but they are undoubtedly vulnerable
to the charge that they fail to address urgent socio-economic problems and
neglect democratic participation. In this light, the mantra ‘we will manage’
takes on a rather cynical meaning.

The other scene of the immigration debate

Indeed, both
the racist underpinnings of the AfD and the German government’s continuing
embrace of technocratic neoliberal paradigms are being challenged every day,
since both are a threat to the daily lives of refugees and other migrants in
Germany. Whenever feminist groups take to the streets in protest against the xenophobic appropriation of the
struggle against patriarchy and sexism; whenever members of the Left Party insist, despite the party’s losses in all three Super
Sunday states and an ongoing internal push for a more nationalist orientation, on
solidarity with refugees and a holistic, democratic left alternative to
austerity; whenever resistance against the government’s neglect for housing, levels
of income and social mediation surfaces amongst the Greens, the Social
Democrats or even Merkel’s own party – then we see this second debate flare up.

But it is
difficult to pursue humane alternatives to the ‘humanitarianism’ of Merkel’s
government. The past six months were marked by tremendous political efforts to ‘seize the opposition’s ground’. In a rather ingenious move, the
chancellor’s decreeing of less restrictive asylum rules for Syrians in August
2015 dispersed not only widespread concerns about the government’s approach to
the Greek Syriza, but also substantial accusations that the state had for years
been turning a blind eye to right-wing political violence – and crucially, it
imposed an artificial choice between either supporting Merkel or being against
refugees.

Faced with this
choice, many sided with the chancellor and continue to do so. But it was an irresponsible
gamble on the chancellor’s part. By silencing most of the progressive,
anti-austerity opposition, she off-handedly caused a shift in the discourse and
strengthened the nationalist charge that the government was ignoring social issues
and was instead ‘putting refugees first’ – Merkel and her close political
allies were in no position to meaningfully counter this charge, while any
criticism from the left risked weakening the proclaimed pro-immigration stance.
For nationalists, pitting the socially disadvantaged against newly arriving refugees
has since been child’s play after fifteen years of neoliberal reforms that have
hit those the hardest who are unemployed, homeless, pensioners or on a low income.

Even a
close relative of mine voted AfD. Talking to him is not easy these days given
the rampant distortion of information that has taken hold, online and offline. Even
if numbers such as ‘Germany received more than a million refugees in 2015
alone’ turn out to be vast exaggerations, they take on a life of their own once
they are being repeated over and over again within the rigidly bipolar frame of
the debate. Both sides have largely been busy to prove a point – so busy that their
point-scoring is clouding the complex bigger picture.

This article appeared in an earlier version on the Migrant Rights Network blog and is reproduced with their kind permission.