Against racism and the right: How to stop the AfD?

January 24, 2024

Susanne Kühn

Whether in Hamburg, Berlin or Potsdam, whether in Cologne, Frankfurt am Main or Munich, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets over recent weeks in protest against the far right Alternative for Germany, AfD. On the weekend of 19-21 January, well over a million people took to the streets across Germany, including 300,000 in Berlin and 200,000 Munich alone. Members, supporters and voters from a broad, cross-class democratic spectrum expressed their anger, concern and fear of the shift to the right.

This mass movement was directly triggered by the plans for “remigration”, that is, the expulsion of millions of people, recently revealed by the research platform CORRECTIV. At a “private”, that is, secret meeting, the fascist Martin Sellner, spokesperson for the Identitarian Movement until 2023, representatives of the AfD, the Werteunion (Union of Values) and other right-wing and far-right extremists, presented their “master plan” to “reverse the settlement of foreigners”. Asylum seekers, people with the right to remain and “non-assimilated citizens” should all be deported by a future right-wing government. Together, the national and ethnic right should make ideological, “discursive” and, of course, tangible, preparations to make life as unbearable as possible for migrants right now.

Ethnic-racist goals

These ethno-fascist goals, the fantastic but at the same time serious and threatening plans, should not come as a surprise. The rise of the AfD in the polls, although fuelled by government policy and the crisis, has been accompanied by its own radicalisation for years. Björn Höcke, the Thuringian far-right AfD state chairman and leader, has become the real driving force behind the party, while its “moderate” wing has been marginalised in recent years. In recent weeks, however, millions have become acutely aware that the AfD is not a “normal” right-wing party, but that its extreme racism is aimed at the targeted deportation of millions.

The revelations by CORRECTIV, an investigative journalist news agency, caused widespread horror because of the obvious parallels to National Socialism, the Wannsee Conference and the plans for the industrialised mass murder of the Jewish people, which are obvious to anyone with half a brain. Plans such as the establishment of a “model state” of up to two million people for “remigrants” in Africa are involuntarily reminiscent of the National Socialist plans to deport four million Jews to Madagascar. And this clear reference to fascism makes it clear how far not only direct Nazis, but also ever larger sections of the bourgeois camp are prepared to go.

The trivialisation of the meeting as a purely “private” exchange by AfD functionaries and members of the Werteunion, or the statement by participants of the meeting that Sellner “was not understood in this way” are purely protective assertions – nothing more. It is not only the AfD that is untrustworthy, but of course also the CDU, which pretends that the Werteunion did not emerge from it.

The presence of its representatives, who come from the right wing of the CDU/CSU, at the “private” meeting, as well as the rise of the Free Voters and the envisaged formation of new right-wing conservative parties between the AfD and CDU/CSU, point to a radical change in middle-class and petty-bourgeois strata, which must be understood not merely as a “protest”, but as a split-off to reshape the middle-class, right-wing camp.

The limits of breadth

In any case, the shock of the revelations has triggered a huge wave of demonstrations. And that is a good thing. The movement includes the radical left, the reformist parties SPD and DIE LINKE, trade unions, Fridays for Future, anti-racist initiatives, migrant organisations, the Greens, the churches, the FDP and even parts of the CDU/CSU parties. In fact, almost everyone except the AfD and open Nazis and racists.

In addition to representatives of “civil society”, speakers from all parliamentary parties, the government, the left and the bourgeois opposition will speak at the demonstrations, even if those from the reformist and left-wing bourgeois spectrum will undoubtedly dominate and probably mobilise the vast majority of participants. There is hardly anyone who does not invoke the “unity of democrats” and calls for the AfD to be banned.

But what many see as the movement’s greatest strength, its cross-class character, the unity of Chancellor Olof Scholz (SPD) and Friedrich Merz CDU/CSU) , and all parties including the Left Party, is in reality also its weakness.

The shift to the right and racism, of which the rise of the AfD is undoubtedly an extremely dangerous expression, seems to exist only outside the “democratic” centre, the decent representatives of bourgeois relations.

Yet it is precisely the representatives of this “centre” – from the CDU/CSU, FPD, SPD, Greens and, more recently, the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) – who are outdoing each other with incessant demands for “better” regulation of migration. One racist law is effectively followed by the next. While the EU’s external borders continue to be closed, the federal police patrol the German borders.

While Faeser, Scholz, Baerbock and Lindner present themselves as philanthropists, the Traffic Light majority (SPD-FDF-Greens) in the Bundestag passed the “Repatriation Improvement Act” on 18 January, the latest in a series of racist tightenings of the law. According to Olaf Scholz, this is intended to enable asylum seekers to be deported “on a grand scale”. Among other things, the law provides for the police’s search options to be extended. In addition, deportations are no longer to be announced unless families with children under the age of twelve are affected. And finally, appeals or complaints against deportations would no longer lead to the suspension of action. For the AfD, the CDU/CSU did not go far enough, but it is certainly a further step towards the deportation of all “useless” migrants.

The decision, at roughly the same time, to make it easier for immigrants to become German citizens, does not compensate for this, rather, it fits in with the concept of “controlled” migration, as demanded by German capital.

While the government and other “democrats” condemn the AfD’s ethnic and nationalist agitation, they themselves are fuelling anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism, criminalising the solidarity movement with Palestine and wanting to check migrants in future for their “reliability” with regard to the German raison d’état.

All of these racist measures and stricter laws pose the greatest immediate threat to millions of migrants and refugees today. While the government and bourgeois forces are pretending to launch an offensive against the Nazis, they themselves are deporting people “on a grand scale”, trying to take the wind out of the sails of the right-wing and CDU/CSU by at least partially adopting and implementing their demands.

Against the racism of the right, the state and government!

Anyone who wants to fight and mobilise consistently against the nationalist, fascist and right-wing populist forces must therefore not remain silent about the government’s own racism, the new deportation laws, the fomenting of anti-Muslim racism and the criminalisation of political opposition by migrants. Anti-racism must include the fight against these state measures, otherwise it itself becomes untrustworthy.

Secondly, we must also clearly distance ourselves from the illusion that the shift to the right would be stopped by a party ban on the AfD. Neither state racism nor fascism would disappear. Above all, however, this slogan fails to recognise that German capital is prepared to fall back on the AfD and far more right-wing forces in the event of an acute crisis or in the face of massive class resistance. Finally, the demand can also easily be used by the bourgeois side to justify bans on radical left-wing “anti-democratic” organisations that are outside the “constitutional consensus”, as we are already seeing today with Palestinian, Kurdish or Turkish organisations.

In order to stop the rise of the AfD, we cannot and must not rely on the state and we certainly must not adapt to it, as Sarah Wagenknecht’s BSW does. Rather, the fight against racism and fascism must be understood as an integral part of the class struggle. Therefore, in the movement against the right, we must fight for the development of an anti-racist united front of the trade unions, the left parties, the migrant organisations and the radical left. To this end, leftists, internationalists, and all organisations of the workers’ movement, including the trade unions, must not only take part in the mass rallies and demonstrations, but also openly and visibly advocate an internationalist and class-struggle approach.