Fighting for Germany : nativism, national belonging and Islamophobia in the Alternative für Deutschland’s 2017 federal election campaign

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Fighting for Germany

Nativism, national belonging and Islamophobia in the Alternative für

Deutschland’s 2017 federal election campaign

Master’s thesis by

IJsbrand Roelof Wildeman

Amsterdam, 21 August 2018

University of Amsterdam

Graduate School of Social Sciences

Research Master Social Sciences

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Author: IJsbrand Roelof Wildeman (10243615) Supervisor: prof. W.G.J. Duyvendak (Jan Willem)

Second reader: prof. A.J.J. Nijhuis (Ton) Word count: 15.693

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Summary

The 2017 German federal elections provided the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) with a surprising 12,6% of votes, which entailed its first political presence in the German Bundestag. This study focusses on the AfD election campaign in the three months prior to the elections. I employ a cognitive-linguistic critical discourse analysis (CL-CDA) framework, in order to uncover the premises and argumentation strategies within the AfD-discourse. Drawing on data from AfD-issued newspapers, election brochures, party documents, speeches and interviews, I argue that the AfD has transformed from a Eurosceptic party to a right-wing populist nativist party. With nativism as its core ideology, the AfD is fixated on protecting the German native-born Volk, which is perceived to be under threat by four mayor processes: the clash with Islam through immigration, the demise of the traditional family model, climate change politics and a corrupted political elite. The insights in this study contribute to (1) the understanding of Western-European nativism and populism and (2) the AfD as a relatively new political party in Germany. The AfD campaign raises questions with regard to the in- and exclusion of groups on the basis of membership to the cultural nation.

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Chapter 1 Introduction

Und was ist Ihr Grund für Deutschland zu kämpfen? 1

Frauke Petry In Germany, the political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has emerged as the new contender on the right of the political spectrum. Founded in 2013, it soon succeeded in setting up a solid party organization, which resulted in a relatively successful run in the 2013 federal election campaign. Considering that it only took seven months from the official founding of the party, in February 2013, to an election result of 4,7% of the general vote, the AfD showed its potential right from the start. However, it was not enough to enter the Bundestag, as in Germany the electoral system employs an election threshold of 5% of the votes.2

Right-wing populism seems to be on the rise across Western-Europe. In some countries, such as France, Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands, voters are already familiar with a relatively strong presence of political parties with right-wing populist viewpoints. At the start of 2017, their presence was expected to grow even bigger; with elections coming up in Hungary (13 March), the Netherlands (15 March), France (7 May), Germany (24 September) and Austria (15 October), and election polls in all countries showing large momentum for right-wing populist parties, the main question was: will 2017 be the ‘year of populism’?

At that time, four years after its founding and with new federal elections coming up, the AfD had established itself in 13 German state-parliaments and the European Parliament, thus gaining more experience in the practices and strategies of election campaigning. The AfD also received positive ratings in the election polls, growing from 4% in July 2015 to 13% of the national vote in January 20173_{. The}

AfD had shifted its programmatic from EU-criticism towards social homogeneity and nationalism (Lehmann & Mattieß 2017), aligning itself more with the anti-immigration programmatic vocalized by similar right-wing populist parties in other Western-European countries.

The federal elections of 2017 turned out to be very successful for the AfD. While the Christian-democratic Union Parties (CDU and CSU) and social-Christian-democratic SPD remained the first and second

1_{In English: And what is your reason to fight for Germany?}

2_{The election threshold is 5% of the Second vote (Zweitstimme), which elects members for parliament of a state}

list of candidates. In order for a political party to enter the Bundestag, it has to either overcome the 5% threshold of Second votes, or has to win at least three election districts by majority of votes for its ‘direct candidate’, through the First vote (Erststimme). See also ‘Election of Members of the German Bundestag’, accessed via: [https://www.bundestag.de/en/parliament/elections/electionresults/election_mp/245694]

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largest, the AfD rose to 12,6% of votes – the highest share of votes by which a new political party has ever entered the Bundestag. After the election results were known, Alexander Gauland - one of the AfD leaders - had a firm warning for the chancellor Angela Merkel: “We will hunt Merkel down, and we will take our country back.”

FIGURE 1.1 – ELECTIONS RESULTS 2017 AND 2013, SHARE OF SECOND VOTES

SOURCE: BUNDESWAHLLEITER (2017)

This study focusses on the AfD during the 2017 German federal election campaign. The focus lies specifically on the way in which the AfD presents societal issues, actors are highlighted, and solutions are proposed to supposed problems. The election campaign, a period from July – September 2017, lends itself for the study of the underlying premises of the AfD discourse. Election campaigns are catalysts for domestic political contestation, in which every political party strives to gather as much votes as possible. The aim of the study is to come to a better understanding of the narratives that a right-wing populist party employs towards its voters, and what the underlying premises of such narratives are.

In this research, the main focus is on political discourse; what do party officials say, write and show, when they try to convince potential voters to cast their vote on the AfD? What are the issues that are most frequently addressed? I take the concept of ‘figured worlds’ as proposed by Holland, Lachicotte Jr., Skinner and Cain (1998) to better understand the socially and culturally constructed realm of interpretation that the AfD presents. I argue that every individual, when speaking or writing, constructs a (temporary) realm of interpretation, in which premises about oneself, the other and society at large are engraved. A political party is no different; during an election campaign, it constructs a relatively uniform

33,0% 20,5% 12,6% 10,7% 9,2% 8,9% 5,0% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%

CDU/CSU SPD AfD FDP Linke Grüne Others 2017 2013

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society. In Chapter 4, I elaborate on the theoretical underpinning of figured worlds and discourse analysis, and give due credit to the scholars who have done substantial work in this field.

Following from the understanding of political campaigns as the construction of figured worlds, I aim to answer one main research question, which holds one sub-question:

(Q) How does the Alternative für Deutschland construct its figured world in the 2017 federal elections?

(subQ1) What are the premises and strategies within the AfD-discourses on immigration, family politics, climate change issues and populism?

In chapter 2, I provide a state-of-the-art on several concepts. First, a theoretical framework considering identity and national belonging is discussed. As it has become clear that these issues are widely debated in the political arena (and beyond), and especially by the AfD, it is necessary to investigate its theoretical foundations. Thereafter, I show contemporary understandings of nativism, orientalism and Islamophobia, as possible ideological factors in right-wing populist parties. At the end of chapter 2, I elaborate on theories with regard to the anti-elitist politics that are mobilized by right-wing populism.

With chapter 3, I depart from a wider Western-European context of right-wing populism, to eventually zoom in on the academic writing on the AfD, written prior to the 2017 federal election campaign. With the contextualization of the AfD election campaign within both a wider frame of geographical space (Western-Europe) and of time (the history of German Volk-centred4_{politics and the}

AfD itself), I show in what ways the AfD is similar to pre-existing nativist politics, but also how the AfD is unique. Chapter 4 discusses the methodology of figured worlds and discourse analysis.

Thereafter, in chapter 5, I show what the utterances of speech, text and visuals are through which the AfD constructs its election campaign. The issues of immigration, family politics and gender, climate change politics and corrupt elites make up the figured world constructed by the AfD. In this chapter, I argue that distinct prejudices towards Islam and Muslims, so-called Gender-ideology, climate change issues and elites are engraved in discursive practice.

In chapter 6, I draw up my conclusions and revisit the research questions. Here, I argue that the AfD succeeds in employing its nativist ideology by framing the issues discussed in chapter 5 as threats to the cultural nation. The AfD is able to do so by repeatedly politicizing the question of who and what belongs in the cultural nation, and who and what does not belong. One way of doing this, is making the connection with the Volk-centred understanding of the cultural nation with pre-existing orientalist and Islamophobic images of Islam and Muslims. Another way of addressing the issue of national belonging is made through family politics and the position of the traditional image of the traditional family.

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At this stage, I would like to stress that the aim of this research is not to poke holes in the logic of the AfD, or to detect factual incorrectness within the AfD discourse. The aim is to better understand how the AfD does what it does, i.e. what assumptions it makes, what problems it sees for the future, and what these assessments say about the AfD’s understanding of Germany as a cultural nation. In doing so, one must take up a critical stance towards the presented facts, and reflect on its dynamics and effects on people. But just as Peter Davies (1999) makes clear with regard to the French Front National, it would be a fiction to say that the AfD are “all Nazis”. A political force supported by more than one in every ten voters deserves a more sincere approach.

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Chapter 2 Theoretical framework

Issues of national identity are dominating political debates in Western-Europe. In order to further the analysis on the AfD election campaign, I will first discuss relevant concepts and theories of identity, belonging, nativism, orientalism and populism. Studies in the fields of sociology, anthropology, history and political science will contribute to the discussion on right-wing populist politics.

2.1. I

DENTITY AND BELONGING TO THE NATION

The construction of identity and the notion of belonging have gathered significant attention in the social and behavioural sciences. The subject matter deals with the in- and exclusion of individuals and ideas on the basis of cultural signifiers and national membership. Excluding entities that are inherently different can be understood as the product of the human tendency to classify and structure its surroundings. The unknown, ambiguous entity disrupts social order, like dirt in an otherwise clean environment, which has to be addressed in order for it to fit in the system that is social order. This idea, developed by Mary Douglas (1966), entails that “dirt is the by-product of a systemic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements” (ibid.: p. 36)

This type of boundary-making is fundamental to identity-construction and the notion of belonging. While there are different ways in which identity construction can occur, I focus on one tenacious way of constructing collective identities: it is the boundary-making process in which the dichotomy between the Self and the Other becomes an ‘Us versus Them’-dichotomy. In this type of identity construction, a (re)construction of difference is commonplace. Judith Butler argues that, when constructing (collective) identities, one draws a boundary, after which something is ‘left outside’; therefore, collective identities are inclusive, by the means of excluding the other (Butler 1993: p.262; cf. Yuval-Davies 2010). This type of identity construction works in a way that inherently links the fate of the individual to the collectivity or group to which the individual is bound (Yuval-Davies 2010: p. 276).

However, identity, or group-identity, have their problems as analytical concepts. Identity comes to be seen as determining the core attributes of an individual; it entails a way of essentializing who someone ‘is’, and focusses strongly on the individual (Anthias 2016). Here, we must take a turn from the concept of identity to a concept that better suits the study of contemporary right-wing politics in political election campaigns: the notion of belonging (Antonsich 2010; Duyvendak 2011; Anthias 2016; Ghorashi 2016). While identity construction is inherent to the notion of belonging, the latter enables us to ask questions about belonging to ‘what’, or ‘with whom’ (Anthias 2016: p.117).

In furthering the analysis on belonging in the context of contemporary right-wing politics, the issue of belonging to the nation becomes salient. The nation is imagined as being necessarily limited by boundaries, as “no nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind” (Anderson, 1983: p.7). Anderson,

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rather famously, argues for the understanding of the nation as an imagined community. It is imagined in that the notion of the nation does not exist outside the members of the nation, but that the image of nations rather lives in the minds of the members of the communion (ibid.: p.6). Being a member of the imagined community, the nation, implies that its members imagine a deep-rooted comradeship among each other (ibid.: p.7).

The nation, then, is socially constructed. But what ties the nation and its members together, or, following Andersons words: what is the foundation of this ‘deep-rooted comradeship’? Already in 1882, Ernest Renan deals with the question of how ‘the nation’ can be understood:

A nation is a spiritual principle, resulting from the profound complications of history, a spiritual family, not a group determined by the configuration of the soil.5

The ideal-typical nation-state is a cultural community, understood as unique in its historical configuration. Although, in reality, members of the nation cannot form a perfect homogenous group in terms of social class, power relations or ethnic configuration, the imagined community that is the nation implies that its members are a homogenous group through some form of historic and cultural rootedness (Brubaker 1990; Anderson 1983). For example: being German, or belonging to Germany, is initially an empty statement, but is ‘filled’ with historical arguments (Geschiere 2009: p.28). Historical and cultural notions are the foundation of the idea and ideals that make up the nation. Furthermore, in contemporary debates, individuals and groups are treated as belonging to one and only one nation-state. The cultural and historical uniqueness entails that membership of one nation is mutually exclusive (Brubaker 1990). Adjacent to this process, the normality of discussing who belongs where and with whom has become naturally linked to rootedness in the (national) culture and its geographical territory. This “national order of things” (Ghorashi 2017: p.2438) links the cultural and historical native to the nation, and simultaneously excludes the Other on the basis of its lack of cultural and historical ‘rootedness’.

2.2. N

ATIVISM AND THE PROBLEM OF IMMIGRATION

When issues of identity and national belonging are discussed, the ideology of nativism flows abundantly through discourse. I follow the definition of nativism by Cas Mudde (2007: p. 19):

an ideology, which holds that states should be inhabited exclusively by members of the native group (“the nation”) and that non-native elements (persons and ideas) are fundamentally threatening to the homogenous nation-state.

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Nativism divides society in, on the one hand, a group that belongs to the nation, and thus within the borders of the nation-state, and on the other, a group that does not. The significance of cultural difference in nativist discourse has also been the centre of the question of who ‘deserves to be a citizen’. This is the culturalization of citizenship; the process in which no longer civic or political rights, but rather cultural norms and values are what makes someone a citizen (Duyvendak 2011; Duyvendak et al. 2016). When discourse utilizes culturalization, or culturalism (Demmer & Mehendale 2012), it gives rise to the argument that “people are equal, cultures are not” (ibid.: 54). To Demmers and Mehendale, the culturalist aspect of nativist discourse is a form of racism on essentialist cultural grounds.

Contemporary discourses on national membership and belonging are informed by past, current and future migration flows (Gingrich & Banks 2006: pp. 17-8). Across Western-Europe, nativist discourse highlights the arrival of immigrants, after which the issues of adaptation and integration are discussed. While immigrants perceive belonging and citizenship in their location of arrival usually on a more local scale (the city, the neighbourhood), natives are predominantly invested in identification on the level of the nation (Geschiere 2009; Hurenkamp et al. 2011; Duyvendak et al. 2016). In this perception by large groups of natives, the arrival of immigrants threatens the supposed culturally homogenous nation, which can turn to the pessimistic conviction that the arrival of immigrants will inevitably cause the downfall of the nation’s ‘culture’. This is a conviction labelled as cultural pessimism (Gingrich & Banks 2006: p.37). Contemporary right-wing populist parties, when engaging in nativist discourse, take the assumption of cultural pessimism as a strong argument for direct measures, such as closing the nation-state’s borders for immigrants (Mudde 2007).

2.3. O

RIENTALISM AND

I

SLAMOPHOBIA

Cultural pessimism interlocks with the centuries-old notion of ‘the Oriental’ (the Arab, the Islamic) as being fundamentally different from ‘the Western’. The Western understanding of the Oriental is a political doctrine of domination and cultural incompatibleness; a doctrine coined by Edward Said as orientalism (1978). Orientalism is a Western frame of knowledge, a dominant discourse, and set of characterizations in which the West is superior to the East. Originating in centuries of West-East contact, categories of differences are engraved in public discourse. In the words of Said (ibid.: p. 49), orientalism creates two categories:

On the one hand there are Westerners, and on the other there are Arab-Orientals; the former are (in no particular order) rational, peaceful, liberal, logical, capable of holding real values, without natural suspicion; the latter are none of these things.

As with orientalism, in which the East functions as the mirror for the West, the negative image of a violent, barbaric Islam reinforced the positive image of its counterpart: a pure and righteous Christianity

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in Western society. The perception of ‘the Western civilization’ inevitably clashing with ‘the Islamic civilization’ has been popularized by Samuel Huntington (1993). He argues that civilizations differ fundamentally from each other in terms of culture, language, history and, most importantly to Huntington, religion. This incompatibleness leads to conflicts between civilizations, of which the clash between Islamic and Western societies are particularly violent, as Huntington states: “Islam has bloody borders” (1993). Although Huntington’s theory has been widely debunked in academic writing (e.g. Said 2001), the creation and popular reception of such a cultural clash-theory demonstrates the aptness of the orientalist doctrine, in which Islam and Muslims come to be connected with violence and barbarism.

This Western image of Islam and Muslims as violent, barbaric and sexual licentious has received a considerable amount of attention in academic writing (Daniel 1960; Said 1978; Miles & Brown 2003; Ekman 2015: p. 1995). Miles and Brown (2003: pp. 27-8) describe the orientalist image of Islam:

Islam was portrayed as founded on aggression and war, as spreading itself by the same means, and as permitting and encouraging polygamy, sodomy and general sexual laxity. It was argued that Islam reproduced the idea of the ‘holy war’ against all non-Muslims, in the course of which the latter would be either brutally murdered or enslaved, and a notion of Paradise as a garden of sexual delights and passions.

Historic orientalism primarily holds presumptions about Asiatic, Arabic and Islamic societies as being ‘out there’ – located somewhere on or around the Eurabian continent. Under the influence of globalisation and migration, these historical orientalist narratives are directed towards the Oriental within Western society, thus framing Islam as an ‘internal threat’. In contemporary academic writing, the concept of Islamophobia has become more accepted to describe this phenomenon (Halliday 1999; Klug 2012; Ekman 2015: p. 1989). I employ the definition of Islamophobia by Gardell:

Socially reproduced prejudices about, and aversions against, Islam and Muslims, and actions and practices that attack, exclude or discriminate people on the basis that they are, or perceived to be, Muslims and associated with Islam’ (cited in Ekman 2015: p. 1988).

So, in contemporary discourse, Islamophobia builds on century-old orientalist preconceptions about Muslims and Islam. It draws a harsh line between two vast abstractions, the first being the righteous, rational and peaceful West, the other being the violent, overly sexual and primitive Islam.

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2.4. R

IGHT

-

WING POPULISM

While widely used both within and outside academia, the concept of populism does not lend itself for a clear-cut definition. Populism has been analyzed as a style of political profession, as a specific type of political discourse, and as an ideology (cf. Ionescu & Gellner, 1969). This conceptual vagueness of populism should lead towards a careful use of the term. In this section, I will distill a minimal definition from the existing literature, predominantly from themes identified by Paul Taggart (2000; 2004) and Cas Mudde (2004; 2007).

Populist thinking defines two antagonistic groups: “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite”, as a manifestation of a clash of “the good” versus “the evil” (Mudde 2007: p. 23; Stanley 2008: p. 105). Populism is a moralistic form of political contestation. The populist sets “a morally pure and fully unified … people against elites who are deemed corrupt or in some other way morally inferior” (Muller 2016: pp. 19-20). The hostility towards representative politics is what fuels populist discourse; it perceives the political elite as a corrupt group of ‘rulers’. Therefore, in abstracto, populism can be understood as an aggression of ‘the ruled’ towards ‘the ruler’ (Taggart 2000: p.109).

Thus, the premise of populism is that ‘the ruled’ – i.e. ‘the pure people’ - lack political representation. When populism is mobilized through some form of political organization (e.g. political party, organized social movement), its representatives are usually invested in highlighting that only they represent ‘the people’ (Muller 2016: p. 20). This form of anti-pluralism helps to contest with political opponents, and constructs a reality in which the populist organization is the direct representation of the whole, homogenous, morally superior ‘people’. In the words of Jan-Werner Muller (2016: p.3): “Populists do not claim “We are the 99 percent”. What they imply instead is “We are the 100 percent”.” The vagueness as to who belongs to this ‘100 percent’ helps the populist, as it can expand and contract on the basis of who he or she wants to in- or exclude (Stanley, 2008: 107).

Populism does not necessarily employ culturalist, nationalist or nativist ideologies. Anti-elitism and the dichotomy of ‘the ruler vs. the ruled’ is being mobilized by groups of different ideological signature, and for different purposes (cf. Akkerman et al. 2014). However, within this study, I argue that populism and nativism interlock on the issue of defending the interests of ‘the people’, and that specifically the concept of wing populism is of interest. While the distinction between left- and right-wing politics is made quite casually in public discourse, I follow Norberto Bobbio (1994) and Cas Mudde (2007) in their political distinction on the basis of attitude towards (in)equalities. Left-wing politics perceive a natural order in which people are equal. Thus, in this political doctrine, inequalities are inherently artificial, in which the state should interfere to make essential redistributions of resources. Right-wing politics perceive inequalities as naturally given. The premise is that people are not equal in their traits, qualities and talents, which naturally results in an unequal distribution of resources.

Cas Mudde (2007) argues that several political parties in Western-Europe can be clustered into one populist radical right party family. Although Mudde also distinguished nativism as the core ideology

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of this party family, I deviate from Mudde’s framework on the issue of what should be the focal point of the analysis. Mudde takes the populist dimension at the centre of the analysis. I take the core ideology of nativism as the central concept, and perceive populism to be a relevant, but slightly less salient concept. Populism seems to lend itself extraordinary well for nativist discourse, however, remains a way-of-thinking in itself. Nativism, with its in- and exclusionary effects on the basis of cultural norms and values, is what I regard as central to the analysis. This is why, in connection to the other relevant concepts, I employ the concept of right-wing populist nativism. It is an ideology which perceives a natural order of inequality between the morally superior native people and the inferior non-native, and seeks to defend the interests of the native people by combatting elites, who are hopelessly disconnected from the native.

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Chapter 3 The AfD in a European context

Right-wing populist parties have gathered significant electoral successes in Western-Europe, dominating the political debates on issues of national belonging and immigration. While I do not wish to demarcate a clear-cut ‘Western-European populist radical right party family’, as Cas Mudde (2007) has done most notably, I do want to highlight some similar political parties in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. This serves two purposes. Firstly, the historical presence of political parties in neighbouring countries, similar in their nativist claims and their fixation on issues of national belonging and immigration, have shaped a significant part of the empirical evidence on right-wing populism. By being aware of similarities across national borders, the analysis of German right-wing populism can be better placed in the Western-European context. The second purpose of providing some international context, is that the AfD itself has joined the international political alliance Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF), in which its members share the same ideological viewpoints with regard to immigration, nationalism and euro-scepticism. The ENF, primarily a political group in the European Parliament, held a conference in Koblenz on 21 January 2017, some eight months prior to the German federal elections. Marine le Pen of the French Front National (FN) and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) stood together with Frauke Petry of the AfD. This public exhibition of ideological alignment makes an investigation into French and Dutch (and also Belgian) nativist politics relevant to better understand the programmatic intentions of the AfD.

Thereafter, the current scholarly insights into the AfD itself are discussed. In order to sharpen the analysis, relevant events leading up to the setting of the current research will help to contextualize the AfD’s efforts in the 2017 federal elections campaign.

3.1. R

IGHT

-

WING POPULISM IN

W

ESTERN

-E

UROPE

Founded in 1972, the French Front National (FN) has been regarded by scholars as a ‘prototype for the populist radical right’ (Mudde 2007: p. 41). Under the leadership of Jean-Marie le Pen, it manifested itself as a right-wing populist party focused on national integrity and the threat of immigration (Davies (1999). Attitudes of xenophobia and patriotism serve to emphasize the importance of the nation, and address “the contours of Frenchness or ‘francité’ – what it is, and what it means to be French” (ibid.: p. 228). Right-wing populism, as employed by the FN, can be summarized as a nativist ideology understood in terms of nationality.

Since the mid-1980s, Vlaams Belang (VB), has been a rather successful right-wing populist party in the Dutch-speaking part of Flanders in Belgium. Inspired by the FN, it is mostly focused on opposing immigration. It also stresses the importance of a native people with the nation (Mudde 2007; p. 43; Taggart 2000: p. 83). Interestingly, the VB defends a nation without a state, and argues for an

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independent state of Flanders. VB in Belgium and FN in France share, in their ideological core, a focus on the ‘fight for the native’.

In the Netherlands, right-wing populism arrived in the political arena in a dramatic sense; Pim Fortuyn, shot dead 9 days before the Dutch general elections in 2002, had led his List Pim Fortuyn (LPF) to a position in which it ultimately acquired 17% of the general vote. Since the ‘Fortuyn revolt’, issues of immigration, integration and national identity have been most prominent in Dutch political debate (Oudenampsen 2018: p. 3-4). Together with Fortuyn, the Freedom Party’s (PVV) Geert Wilders has been the most notable member of what Oudenampsen calls the ‘Dutch New Right’ (ibid.: pp. 12-13). Again, nativist ideology is at the core of right-wing populism. However, within the Dutch context, nativist discourse employs the idea that the cultural and religious Other (Muslims and Islam) is sexually conservative. According to the Dutch New Right, Islamic sexual conservatism collides with “Dutch tolerance” (Uitermark et al. 2014: 235-255). The Dutch discourse on sexual tolerance demands sexual “progressiveness” of the cultural and religious Other, which turns “homosexuality into a weapon” (Bowen et al. 2014: p. 246). Thus, a Dutch native is understood to hold progressive sexual morals.

3.2. F

ERTILE GROUNDS FOR THE

A

F

D?

In comparison to the Western-European countries mentioned above, throughout history, the German state has seen relatively profound changes in its political and geographical configuration. The conception of ‘what is German’ can therefore hardly be derived from the political entity that is the modern nation-state of Germany. The conception of ‘Germanness’ developed before any unified German nation-nation-state; the German nation is conceived as an “organic, cultural, linguistic or racial community – as an irreducibly particular Volksgemeinschaft” (Brubaker 1990: p. 386). Rogers Brubaker argues that this Volk-centred nationhood entails a Germany that is first and foremost a cultural unity (ibid.).

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the CDU/CSU has been the only major political force to explicitly voice anti-immigrant rhetoric (Schmidtke 2015). This idea is supported by Pautz (2005) in his analysis of the German Leitkultur debate, starting in 1999. The then newly-installed centre-left government presented its plans to modernise German immigration law. The idea was to steer away from nationality and belonging to the German Volk as a blood-given right (ius sanguinis), and towards an incorporation of immigrants in modern German society by allowing dual citizenship. However, the conservative CDU/CSU managed to shift the debate towards issues of cultural belonging and, by doing so, creating cultural boundaries between the German and the Other. Pautz argues that here, a new ius

cultus emerged, as a way of demarcating the boundaries of German national identity (ibid.: p. 41).

The CDU/CSU tries to balance two political missions. First, it does not want to lose voters on the far right of the political spectrum, to parties like the AfD. It must do so by carrying a nationalistic agenda (Schmidtke 2015: p. 384). Second, however, it has to make sure that it balances its

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anti-immigration programmatic between “the narrow margins of what the German public is willing to tolerate” (ibid.).

The AfD faces a similar challenge. When the AfD emerged in 2013, it primarily presented a skepticism towards the Euro and the European Union (Berbuir et al. 2014), positioning itself as a single-issue Eurosceptic political party (Schmidt-Beck 2017: p. 114). However, from the 2013 federal elections onward, the AfD increasingly voiced anti-immigrations viewpoints, taking up nationalistic rhetoric. In comparison to the 2013 campaign, the AfD has more strongly vocalized a national cultural identity, societal homogeneity and traditional moral values (Lehmann & Mattieß 2017). This repositioning within the political spectrum has been a focal point within academic literature (cf. Lewandowski 2016). The attention and academic relevance flow from the fact that Germany is a country in which right-wing politics are strongly stigmatized (Berbuir et al. 2015). This stigmatization influences the chances for a right-wing populist party; with regard to a national-level electoral presence, Germany has been a “blank space on the map of European right-wing populism” (Decker 2016: p.1), ever since the Second World War. This makes the AfD unique in Germany, as soon as it takes up ‘classical’ right-wing populist rhetoric, while simultaneously gathering increasing amounts of votes in elections polls. In comparison to similar political parties in Western-Europe, some scholars argue that the AfD is similar to the FN, VB and PVV in its attempts to tap into a popular anxiety (Grimm 2015; Decker 2016), while others argue that the AfD is different from the others, because it holds a market-liberal political party in its positions, but is only national-conservative in its rhetoric (Jankowski 2016).

However, on the issue of internal party struggles, scholars find more consensus. From its foundation, merged from several pre-existing political initiatives (Decker 2016), and throughout its relatively short history, the AfD has never been a monolithic organization; it is under constant tension of competing ‘wings’ within the political party (Berbuir 2015: p. 173). The most recent internal struggle consists of radical right-wing Der Flügel on the one hand, and more moderate Die Alternative Mitte on the other. The first employs harsher rhetoric with regard to immigrants, Muslims and leftist ideology, bordering on racist viewpoint, while Die Alternative Mitte, founded as a reaction to Der Flügel, is concerned with pulling the AfD in a more moderate direction.

In this context of Western-European right-wing populism, and within a country with little experience with right-wing populism on the national level, the AfD has succeeded to set up a credible political organization, despite internal struggle over the ideological signature of the party. Up until the 2017 federal elections, the AfD has started to voice similar nativist ideology, much like political parties in neighbouring countries. Yet, there is no consensus on the characterization of the AfD as a full-fledged right-wing populist party.

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Chapter 4 Methodology

4.1. F

IGURED WORLDS AND OTHERING IN CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS During the German federal election campaign, political parties showcase their worldviews, in order to ultimately gather the largest number of votes possible. Therefore, election campaigns are inherently discursive; political parties use talk, text and visuals to paint a mental picture of the world, in order to legitimize their claim for power. In this research, a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework is implemented to map the “figured worlds” (Holland et al. 1998), or “representations of the world” (Chilton 2004) of the AfD. I follow Dorothy Holland et al. in their definition of figured worlds:

By “figured world,” then, we mean a socially and culturally constructed realm of interpretation in which particular characters and actors are recognized, significance is assigned to certain acts, and particular outcomes are valued over others. Each is a simplified world populated by a set of agents … who engage in a limited range of meaningful acts or changes of state … as moved by a specific set of forces … (Holland et al. 1998: p. 52). Figured worlds are not physical spaces per se, as they are “processes and traditions of apprehension” (ibid: p. 41). Political parties, as all text-producers do, engage in the constant (re)construction of the figured world though discursive practices. Discourse both constitutes the social world and is constituted by social practices (Jørgensen & Phillips 2002: p. 61). This entails that, simply put, a political speech is not only a representation of how the politician sees the world, it also reconstructs the world-view laid down in that same political speech. Discursive practices hold a dialectical relation to other social practices, as they are both influenced by existing (discursive) historical structures and shape the world anew (ibid.). When a political party, for example, argues for the implementation of a new policy, it will apply existing ways of thinking and talking about the subject matter. However, it also constructs a new world, in which the proposed policy will prove to be the adequate solution.

The present study employs a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework. In CDA, the focus is on how discursive practices contribute to the (re)shaping of power relations (van Dijk 2001; Reisigl & Wodak 2001; Jørgensen & Phillips 2002; Hart 2010, 2011) Here, utterances of AfD-officials during the election campaign must be understood as instances of (re)shaping power relations in German society. This entails that discourse as social practice contributes to maintaining existing power relations, but also has the ability to contest the status quo.

Within CDA, the cognitive-linguistic approach (CL-CDS) provides the important connection between basic mental processes and text-production and -consumption. The approach argues that

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discourse as their data, and analyse recurrent utterances to deconstruct discourse (Wodak 2006; Hart 2018). The practical implication for CDA-research is to combine linguistic and sociological approaches, in order to see how conceptualisations shape the figured world of the speaker.

Conceptualisation is a cognitive activity, triggered through discourse; the (re-)production of meanings occurs through a particular construal operation (Croft & Cruse, 2004; Hart, 2011): the activity by which the text-producer encodes a particular conceptualisation. In the words of Croft and Cruse (2004: p.40): “Whenever we utter a sentence, we unconsciously structure every aspect of the experience we intend to convey.” One does not escape the structuring effect of language and, by doing so, the creation of a semantic frame (ibid.). Within CL-CDS, the aim is to deconstruct the construal operation in a specific discursive context, in order to reveal its contribution to the maintenance or abolishment of current power relations between social groups.

One fundamental construal operation is categorization. With categorization, text-producers and -consumers use abstractions to refer to real-world individuals, groups, entities, actions, events and processes (Hart, 2011: 179). The cognitive ability to compare enables individuals to categorize. Categories are idealised notions in that they are abstract but are also more often than not ideological. Discursive construction of categories occurs through labelling. Hart (ibid.: 179-80) provides several examples of categorizations in discourse on immigration, such as nationyms (the Germans), antroponyms (immigrants) and actionyms (asylum-seekers).

The structuring effect of discourse upholds current power relations between social groups. When a text-producer aims to construct explicit in- and out-groups, several strategies are at play. Table 4.1., adapted from Reisigl & Wodak (2001: pp. 45-6), shows how the strategic representation of the Self and the Other takes place.

Strategy Question

Referential strategies How are persons referred to / named?

Predicational strategies What traits, characteristics, qualities and features are attributed to them?

Argumentation strategies By means of what arguments and argumentation schemes do specific persons or social groups try to justify and legitimate their own beliefs and their role towards others?

Table 4.1. – Strategies of self- and other-representation, from Reisigl & Wodak (2001).

Referential strategies play into the human ability to categorise people, groups and entities (Hart 2010: pp. 49-61). In the specific way that social entities are referred to, certain features are highlighted and ‘relations of difference’ emerge (Hart 2011). As Christopher Hart (2010: p. 49) puts it:

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The construction of in-groups and out-groups is triggered by cultural inputs (texts) and where the boundary lies between them is imparted through cultural transmission (discourse).

When specific traits or characteristics are attributed to the Other, predicational strategies are at play. Here, persons, groups, things etc. are characterised in terms of quality, quantity, space, time, etc. These strategies are not completely separate from referential strategies, as a mere reference already carries a form of (normative) labelling (Reisigl & Wodak 2001: p. 46). Uttering the term ‘commoner’, for instance, is a way to refer to a person, but also holds specific meanings in specific social contexts with regard to his or her supposed traits.

In addition to referential and predicational strategies, the body of political discourse consists of argumentation strategies. These strategies lead to the justification of attributing traits to persons, social groups or ideas. Here is where, in immigration discourse, discrimination and the exclusion of the Other becomes an explicit matter (ibid.). Argumentation strategies consist of standard argumentation schemes, in which certain conclusions about the subject matter are presupposed. In argumentation theory, these premise-laden schemes are referred to as topoi (van Dijk 2000; Reisigl & Wodak 2001; Hart 2011). Within the realm of a specific topos, text-producer and -consumer hold roughly the same premises, or ‘conclusion-rules’ (Reisigl & Wodak 2001: p. 75; Hart, 2011: p. 10). In this research, I combine the topoi by Christopher Hart (2010) and Reisigl and Wodak (2001) as a way to uncover the premises in the discursive practices of the AfD. The selected topoi are used as a point of departure, but are not necessarily sufficient to explain all recurrent premises within the election discourse of the AfD. In Chapter 5, when discussing the data, new topoi will be combined with the ones presented in Table 4.2.:

Topos Premise/conclusion rule

Burden It burdens the in-group

Character It has certain undesirable characteristics

Crime It is a criminal

Culture It has deviant norms and values, which are incompatible with the norms and values of the in-group

Danger It is dangerous

Disease It is dirty and carries infectious diseases

Displacement It will eventually outnumber and/or dominate the in-group Exploitation It exploits the welfare system of the in-group

Uselessness It has no use, or other actions will more likely lead the aim Table 4.2. – Typical topoi with its respective premises

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Topoi function as ‘standard plots’ in figured worlds. Constructing topoi in political discourse is a practical tool to connect with an audience that would most likely accept its premises. Within a topos, the conclusion is implicit in the argument, which makes it an effective instrument to address sensitive and contested subject matter, without literally spelling out the sometimes-controversial prepositions implied.

In this study, I use the CL-CDS approach to interpret the data summarised in Table 4.3.:

Within this study, the German 2017 federal election campaign is primarily understood as a form of discursive practice, which requires a linguistic-discursive approach. Yet, the figured worlds that are shaped though these practices are not solely discursive; figured worlds, as realms of interpretation, can also take shape in performances and social activities (Holland et al. 1998: p. 51). Social action and participation are inherently linked to discourse. In the words of Lave and Wenger (1991: pp. 51-2): “Persons, actions, and the world are implicated in all thought, speech, knowing, and learning”. In the act of participation, a continuous “renegotiation of meaning” (ibid.) is at work.

The classical act of campaigning requires the political party to let its representatives interact with voters; on the street, the market square, community centre or any other physical space. I understand this orchestration of a campaign event as an “embodied narration” (Yuval-Davies 2010: p. 267), i.e. as a way in which the political party enables itself to physically manifest itself in the public space. In the present study, I gathered data from participant observations from thirteen campaign events, with the aim to immerse myself, as a researcher, within the discursive field of the AfD. Discourse analysis entails the study of text, talk and visuals, but can also incorporate forms of social action (van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999).

Data

Party documents Party manifesto

Election manifesto

Election brochures 15 issues

AfD-issued newspapers AfD-Kompakt – 2 issues Sachsen Aktuell – 8 issues Thüringen Post – 7 issues Blauer Aufbruch – 5 issues

Interviews Saxony-Anhalt state parliamentarian for the AfD Chemnitz press-speaker for the AfD

Dresden City councilman for the AfD Table 4.3. – Data overview. For a more detailed overview, see Appendix A.

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Date Location Speaker(s) Setting Approx. number of attendees

01-08-2017 Leipzig Albrecht Glaser Informative speech (indoor) 50 04-08-2017 Weimar Björn Höcke, Stephan Brandner Speeches (indoor) 35 11-08-2017 Magdeburg André Poggenburg, Robert Farle,

Oliver Kirchner, Matthias Büttner Speeches and dialogue (indoor) 55 14-08-2017 Markkleeberg Frauke Petry, Lars Hermann Speeches (indoor) 80 15-08-2017 Freital André Barth Informative speech and dialogue

(indoor) 20

18-08-2017 Dessau Björn Höcke, Paul Hampel, Andreas

Mrosek, André Poggenburg Speeches and protest march (outdoor) 80 21-08-2017 Chemnitz Frauke Petry, Nico Köhler Speeches and dialogue (indoor) 60 11-09-2017 Merseburg Björn Höcke, André Poggenburg,

Martin Reichardt, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider

Speeches (outdoor) 100 12-09-2017 Jena Alice Weidel, Stephan Brandner,

Danny Jankowski Speeches and protest march (outdoor) 150 14-09-2017 Aschersleben Ronald Bischoff Speech and dialogue (indoor) 15 18-09-2017 Delitzsch Detlev Spangenberg Speech and dialogue (indoor) 20 20-09-2017 Halle (Saale) Evelyn Nitsche, Jürgen Elsässer,

Alexander Raue, Martin Reichardt Speeches (outdoor) 150 22-09-2017 Freiberg Heiko Hessenkemper, Andrea Kersten,

Jörg Urban, Maximilian Krah Speeches (outdoor) 100 Table 4.4. – Overview of election campaigns attended.

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4.2. S

COPE OF RESEARCH

The scope of study encompasses the national party organization of the AfD, during the 2017 federal election campaign. However, a large share of the data is from newspapers issued by the state-level organisations of three ‘new states’, which before 1990 were part of the German Democratic Republic (GDR): Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. The campaign events I attended were also all hosted in these three states. I follow Frank Decker (2016) in his analysis that in these ‘new states’, in Eastern-Germany, topics of national identity are addressed more frequently, particularly through anti-establishment rhetoric and xenophobic positions (Decker 2016: p.6). While AfD-candidates from Western-Germany focus more on liberal-economic issues, candidates from Eastern-Germany employ a more authoritarian approach, tapping into nationalist conservative viewpoints (Jankowski 2017). An important point to make here, is that when I refer to an ‘AfD-discourse’, or a ‘figured world by the AfD’, I do not want to neglect inter-party differences, or believe that such a monolithic entity could exist in such a static way. Yet, I do ascribe responsibility toward the AfD, as one single political actor, for all (recurrent) narratives it produces. In campaigning, the AfD strives to present itself as a unified political party, in order to acquire as many votes as possible. When the AfD, striving for political power for the party, shapes a recurrent figured world, with recurrent actors, processes and meanings, I argue that one can treat the political party as a single actor, responsible for its communications towards possible voters. In the interpretation of the results and conclusions, it remains important to note that this study is most likely influenced by its predominantly Eastern-German setting.

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Chapter 5 “Win our country back” - the AfD election discourse

In the months prior to the 2017 federal elections, the AfD strategically employs election campaign tactics. The analysis of discursive practices, as produced by AfD-affiliated actors, shows what themes are addressed most frequently, and in what manner these themes are said and written. The aim is to explore the distinct conclusion rules within the topoi in the AfD-discourse, in order to uncover the distinct way in which the AfD uses nativist discourse in its election campaign. The research findings result in the mapping of the figured world as constructed by the AfD in the 2017 federal election campaign.

First, immigration and Islam are discussed. Thereafter, ‘family politics’, the representations of a ‘normal’ family and its importance for the future of Germany will be explored. Climate politics will follow next, and finally, the role of corrupt elites will be addressed.

5.1. I

MMIGRATION DISCOURSE AND THE REPRESENTATION OF

I

SLAM

Over the last eight years, violent conflict and persecutions in Syria, Libya and Yemen have led to large flows of refugees and migrants. In their quest for a better life, many migrated to neighbouring countries, such as Lebanon and Turkey. In more recent years, hundreds of thousands of migrants chose to seek refuge in Europe. In 2015, in Germany, approximately 1,1 million migrants were registered by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Homeland (BMI)6_{. Many did not formally apply}

for asylum, as ‘only’ 476.649 applications were treated by the BMI in that year. The reality of the large amounts of immigrants arriving in Germany has had a large effect on agenda-setting efforts by the AfD. It made issues regarding integration and national belonging more salient. The AfD has made continuous efforts to problematize immigration as the single most important election theme. With regard to immigration and Islam, the topos of culture flows prominently through the nativist discourse employed by the AfD. In (1), other topoi intersect with the premises from the topos of culture:

(1) Anyone who comes from a culture with restrictive sexual morals and treats German

women as inferior sex objects and abuses them, like the Syrian, Arab and

North-African perpetrators of Cologne, Hamburg, Stuttgart and Weil am Rhein, is not only an ungrateful criminal unable to integrate, but is also obviously hostile to inländer.i

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The premise within the AfD-employed topos of culture can be summarized as: immigrants from certain countries carry norms and values that harm the native (inländer)7_{. Although the speaker in (1) addresses}

specific (sexual) perpetrators, he adheres to the conditional conclusion rules most commonly used in the topoi of culture, crime and danger of the AfD. Within the topos of crime, it is presupposed that the Other is criminal in nature. In the AfD-discourse, the topoi of culture and crime intersect regularly, as century-old islamophobic images of ‘the Muslim as sexual perpetrator’ are mobilised. Using Syrian, Arab and North-African perpetrators as the focal point of the problem, is no coincidence. When looking at (2), which can be found in the AfD-brochure listing its viewpoints on ‘mass-immigration’, the issue of the criminal trait of asylum seekers is stressed:

(2) The dramatic consequences of bad asylum policy concern us all.

… The threat of terrorism has risen massively, as the attacks in 2016 show. The same applies to crime committed by asylum seekers, which is disproportionately high, especially with regard to sexual assault.ii

As is the case in (1), the topoi of culture, crime and danger intersect. The topos of danger, in which the premise is that the Other is dangerous, entails a threat directed at the in-group, being inherently German. In (1), German women are the victim of the abusive nature of those ‘who come from a[nother] culture’ – implying the religion of Islam.

Within the AfD-discourse, the criminal nature of the Muslim is one of several indicators for a supposed cultural incompatibleness. I argue for the addition of the topos of incompatibleness as a distinct scheme of interpretation. Consider (3), (4) and Figure 5.1. in which the incompatibleness is addressed:

(3) The AfD sees the spread of Islam as a great danger to our state, our society and our system of values. A secular democracy as form of government is incompatible with Islam.iii

(4) The AfD wants to prevent the spread of Islamic parallel societies, in which Muslim "justices of the peace" apply Islamic Sharia law and undermine the state's monopoly on prosecution and jurisdiction.iv

7_{Here, the term Inländer, is best translated as ‘native’, as an antonym of Ausländer (foreigner). The latter is a}

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The AfD constructs a consistent image of Islam. Islam does not belong to the cultural nation, and therefore does not belong to its natives. It is an alien element in an otherwise peaceful Germany. A recurrent argumentation strategy is played through the supposed role of Sharia law and Islam in German society. Here, a legislative argument flows through the topos of incompatibleness. It provides with the conclusion rule that the Islam is incompatible with German rule of law. It does so via a pars pro toto reasoning. Sharia-law comes to stand for the Islam at large. The argumentation strategy, in which the AfD legitimizes their claim for the Islam as alien and hostile, uses this pars pro toto to show the incompatibleness of Sharia-law, and thus Islam as an ideology, on the one hand, and the German constitution on the other.

The incompatibleness of Islamic values on the one hand, and German values on the other, is mobilized frequently. The argumentation strategy entails that incompatibleness of values leads to “parallel societies”, which in turn leads to the demise and, ultimately, collapse of German society. It is addressed in (4) and (5). In the latter, parliamentary candidate Stephan Brandner exhibits another typical example of this argumentation strategy:

(5) In misunderstanding of the Basic Law and other German laws, she [Angela Merkel] said that the Volk are anyone who lives in Germany - an incredible blunder for a German Chancellor!

I say: No, Mrs. Merkel! Not everyone who somehow happens to live here, belongs to the Volk! And a state, a nation-state like Germany, is more than a piece of landmass on which anyone who invades it can settle, after which it can develop its parallel

society and install its own religious system, through funding by those “who already

FIGURE 5.1. – AFD ELECTION BROCHURE: “ISLAM DOES NOT BELONG TO GERMANY!”

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The Other is not always directly referred to as Muslim or supporting the Islamic faith. It is implied in the argument, as the AfD only refers to ‘parallel societies’ when referring to Islamic norms and values. Here, existing Islamophobic prejudices with regard to violence, barbarism and sexism are evoked. In (6), the focus lies on the relation between man and woman within Islam.

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Put civil marriage before religious wedding

By prohibiting the religious arranged marriage, we want to counteract the imam-marriage, which often allows polygamy, child marriage and marriages with relatives.vi

The Other “invades” the German nation-state. While intersecting the topoi of culture and incompatibleness, the topos of danger carries the implication of the Islam and Muslims to be dangerous towards the native. Again, the dangerous nature does not have to be spelled out or ‘proven’. It is implied in the argument itself.

The AfD frequently uses the topos of crime as an argumentation strategy to legitimize its plans to strengthen the efforts to deport criminal foreigners. This is made explicit in (7), (8) and on one of the AfD campaign posters (Figure 5.2.).

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Effective battle against foreigner crime

The vast majority of foreigners involved in violent and drug-related crime are rarely prosecuted following immigration law. Specifically, foreign criminals can very often appeal to ‘deportation-obstacles’ and are thereby spared from deportation.vii

(8) 33 percent of murder suspects are foreigners. Both the massive increase in burglary and the criminal activities of asylum-seekers are nothing but imported crime.viii

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FIGURE 5.2. – AFD ELECTION POSTER: “AT LAST, DEPORT CONSISTENTLY! VOTE AFD”8

Here, the conclusion rules of the topoi of culture, crime and character is racially laden: the AfD taps into existing notions of race, and reconstructs the figured world in which men of colour are criminal in nature. Simply put, the premise in the campaign poster in Figure 5.2. is: young men of colour are criminal, and thus do not belong in Germany. These are sharp referential and predicational strategies; the Other, referred to as foreigners, immigrants and asylum-seekers, but just as easily as Muslims or North-Africans, are attributed as naturally criminal and deviant. When referred to as immigrant/foreigner, crime statistics is the preferred argumentation strategy, of which (8) is a typical example.ix

Cultural pessimism, the conviction that the national culture will perish due to the influx of migrants, is a strong motivator within the AfD discourse. In (9), the typical argumentation strategy following from the conviction of cultural pessimism is employed:

(9) In order to protect the prosperity of our country, the social security systems and our culture, we, at last, need a battle against the demographic change. A society that cannot sustain itself is doomed. As long as having children is more of a risk than blessing for many couples, due to the Altpolitik, our Germany, with its achievements and its virtues, will soon be a chapter in the history books.x

The premise here is that German prosperity, culture, virtues, achievements and social security are superior, and that they are in danger, due to ‘demographic change’. In earlier works (Hart 2010), this argumentation scheme has been labeled as the topos of displacement, in which the premise is that the alien outsider will eventually outnumber and overthrow the native. In AfD discourse, cultural pessimism is channeled through the topos of displacement.

In (10), a solution to the supposed threat of demographic change is proposed:

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(10) We have to win our country back. On the issue of migration, with the AfD, there will be a Rückführungskultur without upper limits and the core message of our policy will be: "Our Germany first!"xi

A Ruckfuhrungskultur, literally a ‘culture of return’, is a play on words in reaction to

Wilkommenskultur (‘welcoming culture’). The latter has been widely used to describe Angela

Merkel’s immigration policy, regarded as perceiving immigrants as a positive contribution to

German society. The AfD proposes to replace the Wilkommenskultur with a culture focused on

sending back migrants. This is needed, the AfD argues, in order to “win our country back” (see

(10)).

To conclude, in the 2017 federal election campaign, the AfD strategically employs talk, text and image to construct a specific figured world. It is a world that taps into existing discriminatory and Islamophobic notions, and reconstructs them in the context of increased numbers of immigration in Germany. Through construal operations, the Other (Muslims, North-Africans, Syrians, immigrants, asylum-seekers) is categorized as criminal and lazy. The AfD uses referential and predicational strategies to construct a sharp distinction between us and them – between the immigrant and the German. The discursive practices the AfD employs are therefore nationalist, nativist and culturalist in nature; the German native is perceived to be under threat by alien forces (Islam). This requires immediate action, due to the conviction of cultural pessimism, and only the AfD is brave and sensible enough to address this issue of deteriorating German culture.

5.2. F

AMILY POLITICS AND GENDER NORMS

In the 2017 federal election campaign, the AfD argues for the protection of what it understands as ‘the traditional family’. The underlying rationale is not simply that of moral superiority of a relationship between a man and a woman over same-sex relationships; to the AfD, the traditional family is predominantly seen as a means by which the German cultural nation can be preserved. In (11), taken from the AfD-newspaper issued in Saxony-Anhalt, this argumentation is uttered:

(11) By family we mean the relationship between man and woman, from which children follow. The family is the seed of society. It guarantees the preservation of our

Volk, our state and our nation. Family life conveys care and solidarity, respect and

humanity. Intact families guarantee that young people grow up to be responsible citizens of our state.xii

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With regard to family politics, I argue that the AfD employs a standard-scheme of conclusion rules, i.e. the topos demography. The AfD constructs its argumentation by evoking the feeling that the German nation is under threat, and only ‘real’ Germans can carry the cultural nation towards the future. This point is also voiced in (12), taken from the AfD-issued ‘Magdeburg Declaration of Early Sexualisation’, published shortly before the federal elections. Also in (13), taken from the election brochure “Traditional? We like it!”, the topos of demography becomes explicit:

(12) In our children, the family, the Volk and the nation live on.xiii

(13) Our ancestral population is shrinking with more than 250.000 people per year! … With the current demographic situation, Germany needs population-politics, aimed at increasing the birth rate. … Do not stand idly by as our Volk slowly vanishes!xiv

The traditional family, as “the seed of society”, will not only ensure a new generation of true German natives, but will also ensure the preservation of cultural values inherent to natives. The cultural nation comes to be naturalized in native Germans. The strong emphasis on the native, defined along bloodlines, holds the premise that the non-native could never contribute to preserving the cultural nation, as it simply lacks naturalized German cultural values. The exclusion of immigrants, also referred to as Neue

Deutsche (“New Germans”), is made salient in an election poster (Figure 5.3.):

The election poster plays into the narrative of political opponents of the AfD. “New Germans” is a term used to describe immigrants, with an underlying understanding that immigrants are included within German society (which makes immigrants, although ‘new’, inherently German). With this election poster, the AfD rejects the terminology as describing immigrants, thus excluding immigrants as possible

FIGURE 5.3. – AFD ELECTION POSTER: ““NEW GERMANS?” WE MAKE THOSE OURSELVES.”

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Germans – ‘making’ new Germans. The election poster conveys a strong message: immigrants, ‘new’ or otherwise, cannot possibly be German. Only native-born Germans can.

An additional argumentation strategy is to combine the topos of demography and culture with the topos of law. The AfD regularly references Article 69_{of the constitution, which states that “marriage}

and the family shall enjoy the special protection of the state”. Considering (12), in which the rigid and heteronormative notion of the family becomes explicit (“by family we mean the relationship between man and woman ….”), Article 6 of the German Basic Law becomes a legal ‘weapon’ against forms of marriage and romantic relationships that do not fit in the heteronormative image. In (14), taken from the AfD election manifesto, the legal ground is made explicit:

(14) The leading principle of marriage and the traditional family with children, which are

protected by the Basic Law, must be preserved and strengthened.xv

Same-sex relationships are also frequently addressed within the AfD-discourse. As only traditional families can produce new native Germans, carrying the cultural nation into the future, same-sex relationships collide with the ideal of a continued Volk. Within this context, ‘Gender-ideology’ is frequently pointed out as a particularly worrisome phenomenon, because it is perceived to indoctrinate (young) individuals with an orientation towards same-sex relationships. In (15), (16) and (17) the threat of Gender-ideology is put forward:

(15) We are concerned with the protection, preservation and promotion of freedom, not with the cutting back of rights. … Gender-ideology wants to abolish the classical family as a model of life and as role model, and thus stands in clear contradiction to the Basic Law, which protects the (classically understood) marriage and family as state-bearing element.xvi

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The Gender-ideology is unconstitutional

The followers of Gender-ideology deny the biological differences between the sexes.xvii

(17) Gender research is no serious science, but follows the ideological premise that the natural sex and the social gender are completely independent from each other.

The federal- and state governments are no longer allowed to provide with funds for “Gender-research”, or to hire “Gender-professors”.xviii

Fighting for Germany : nativism, national belonging and Islamophobia in the Alternative für Deutschland’s 2017 federal election campaign