Germany`s Dream of Multiculturalism
The Syrian Refugee Crisis and the Rise of Radical Populism
Bachelorthesis Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology
Student: Rouven Bo Stukenberg (10437916) Contact: rouven.stukenberg@gmail.com Supervisor: I.L. (Irene) Stengs
Second Supervisor: dr. (Barak) Kalir Institute: University of Amsterdam Word Count: 10054
‘Granting asylum is always a question of generosity, and if one wants to be
generous, one has to risk helping the wrong people. This is the other side of the
coin, and this at the same time probably constitutes the dignity of such an act.’
– Carlo Schmid, Member of the German Federal Parliament 1948
Verklaring: Ik heb de UvA regels ten aanzien van fraude en plagiaat gelezen en begrepen [
http://student.uva.nl/binaries/content/assets/studentensites/uva-studentensite/nl/a-z/regelingen-en-reglementen/fraude-en-plagiaatregeling-2010.pdf?1283201371000].
Ik verklaar dat dit geschreven werkstuk volledig mijn eigen werk is, dat ik alle bronnen die ik heb gebruikt zorgvuldig en correct heb aangegeven, en dat ik volgens de regels heb geciteerd. Ik heb dit werkstuk, in deze of gewijzigde versie, niet eerder ingediend voor een ander vak of als onderdeel van een ander werkstuk.
Introduction
In periods of social change we are looking to political and societal leaders to blaze the trail and lead us through the transition. It is for them to risk the first step and for us to follow. They can inspire us only with their words, because they are able to transfer their vision on a bigger scale. These speech events make us believing in something new, regardless of its rationality and consequences. In 1963 Martin Luther King uses this power of speeches to ignite the emancipation movement of Afro-Americans in the United States in his famous I have a dream speech. Hereby, he placed his dream within the American Dream of equality, prosperity and freedom. Through this linkage, he not only inspired black people, but also translated his dream directly into a greater goal for the whole nation (Oudenampsen 2010: 7). After Martin Luther King’s death the dream continued to live in the minds of the people. In the presidential election campaign of 2008 Obama revives Martin Luther King’s dream and integrates it into his own of becoming the first black president of the States. He too, uses the skill of speeches to gain the support of the people. The Yes we can slogan refers to everybody and signals that there are no limits in experimenting with the unconventional and fishing into deeper waters. This slogan got Obama the needed trust to achieve his goal of becoming the first black president of the States. Now, the Syrian refugees crisis of 2014 urges again a leader to stand up and take the reins to deal with the great influx of refugees to Europe. Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, proclaimed the words Wir Schaffen Das1 and steps hereby into the footprints of Martin Luther King and Obama in making people believe.
It is in a press conference to the inner and external situation on the 31st of August in
2015, when Angela Merkel proclaims first the words Wir Schaffen Das, which become not only her political guideline for the upcoming months, but also trigger a German multicultural dream. Immediately after Merkel said this Wir Schaffen Das slogan thousands of refugees made their way to Germany and arrived on a daily basis. In the year of 2015 approximately 1.1 millions refugees arrived in Germany. This new development of the Syrian refugee crisis is assimilated with mixed feelings in the German public. On the one side there are those, who welcome the refugees with great sympathy and on the other side there are those who decline Merkel’s politic of open borders and see the refugees as an endangerment for Germany. In other words Merkel’s slogan divides the Germany society into two different groups. Those two groups clash in their vision of how the German society has to look like. While the first one agrees with Merkel and strives to a new tolerant and multicultural face of Germany, the latter seeks a future, which is based on an imagined and idealized past. This confrontation
between those two groups is to understand on a greater scale of a social movement against the neoliberalism and an established political elite. The refugee crisis therefore lifts a curtain of a deeper sitting societal dissatisfaction with the current political class from a usually large white worker class. These people feel not anymore represented by the politics and feel excluded and displaced in their own society. Their disappointment transforms into anger, which becomes then manifested in a new radical movement known as populism.
Movements of populism emerge also in other Western countries. However, to understand the German populism we need to focus on the populist rhetoric and imaginaries, which are used in a particular German everyday context. Hereby, it is necessary to analyse how people construct the social reality of their environment including identities, boundary practices and social relationships in local contexts (Mepschen 2015: 63). In these contexts people shape certain discourses and perspectives, which determine their social behaviour. It is for this very reason that I analyse first the reactions of the German public to the refugee crisis in everyday contexts. In order to do so, I will use empirical material including various newspapers, YouTube videos and other media sources of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2014 to derive an ethnographic analysis. I support my findings with theoretical concepts of citizenship, multiculturalism, and the imagined other and ideas of religion and secularism. In explaining each single concept in its relationship to the refugee crisis I hope to get to the bottom of a specific way of thinking in both groups. In the case of the welcome movement I identify a multicultural approach as the main incentive of their welcoming behaviour. In contrast, I place the radicalisation movement into the broader context of an emerging radical populism. It is my goal to show that both movements are actually complementary to each other and have a mutual relationship. They are less a reaction to the refugee crisis itself than to the current political developments in Germany.
In a final step I try to enlarge my vision on the emergence of radical populist movements. Firstly, I focus on the theory behind populism to understand their methods and strategies. Populism in its emergence as a political protest party is the result of an increasingly left orientated, abstract and neoliberal political elite, which embraces a multicultural society. I argue that the supporters of the radical populist movements have lost the connection with such a political class and are struggling now in finding their place within the new societal order. The polarisation is caused by a ruling neoliberal elite, which simply applied a structural change from above on a local community without taking into account their personal needs and desires (Kalb 2009: 208). The radicalisation movement is therefore in first instance a defence mechanism against a structural change. Only in a second step through, the manipulation of
populist groups, they transform into a critic against a democratic neoliberal elite. In analysing this process of manipulation I hope to find countermeasures against the emergence of radical populist movements. Therefore my main question, which I discuss here, is: What is the relationship between the Welcome Culture and the current radicalisation movement in Germany and how can we understand it as a critic of a neoliberal elite?
Wir Schaffen Das!
In summer 2015 the Syrian Refugee crisis hit Europe in its whole magnitude and forced European politics to take action. Germany reacted to the extent of the refugee crisis through drastically correcting its numbers of expected refugees from 450.000 up to 800.000 refugees for the year of 20151. In need of an explanation of the actual inner and external political situation, chancellor Angela Merkel gave a press speech to the German public on 31st of August. It is here that Merkel proclaimed the Wir Schaffen Das slogan for the first time. At this point it was not foreseeable what far-reaching implications that slogan would have for the German society. Because of its centrality in the following events, it becomes here my intention to understand the motivations and objectives behind the Wir Schaffen Das slogan in more detail. I will argue that the slogan is motivated through two different moral approaches. Firstly, we can derive a moral understanding of Wir Schaffen Das through the concept of refugees itself. Secondly, I will take a brief look at the German past in order to derive a cultural understanding of morality, which is based on concepts of guilt and responsibility.
I am simply saying: Germany is a strong country. The approach therefore must be: We achieved already so much – We can do it! We can do it, and if there are any obstacles in our way, then we need to overcome and work on them. The federal government will do everything it can do – together with the states and the municipalities – to achieve exactly that goal.2 – Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany 2015
This slogan Wir Schaffen Das was much more than just an appeal for solidarity; it was a complete game-changer in the entire Syrian refugee crisis. Before Merkel`s speech, Europe as a whole pursued a politic of shielding off against the refugees. Now, Germany opened up its borders as the first country in the EU and sent a clear message to all refugees in the world that it would not turn them down. Germany became in this sense a lighthouse to all refugees and took an example in human dignity. Wir Schaffen Das can be therefore understood as a moral
1 DIE ZEIT, Tina Hildebrandt and Bernd Ulrich 2015, In the eye oft he storm, (12/04/16)
<http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2015-09/angela-merkel-refugees-crisis-chancellor>
2 Die Bundesregierung 2015, Sommerpresskonferenz von Bundeskanzler Merkel, (11/04/16)
< https://www.bundesregierung.de/Content/DE/Mitschrift/Pressekonferenzen/2015/08/2015-08-31-pk-merkel.html> Free translation by Rouven Stukenberg
approach of how to manage the crisis. In her speech on the 31st August, Merkel referred also to the right of asylum in Germany, which is constitutionally determined in the Basic Law. Article 16 (2) of the Basic Law states that all persons, who are persecuted for political reasons enjoy the right of asylum (Bosswick 2000: 44). In doing so Merkel pointed to a collective moral responsibility to host persecuted persons and emphasized her Wir Schaffen Das slogan. It is this collective moral responsibility behind the Wir Schaffen Das slogan, which is of crucial importance to understand the further developments in Germany in response to the refugee crisis.
Firstly, Merkel`s understanding of moral responsibility is linked to the perception of refugees in an international context. That means that refugees are a part of the creation of sovereign states, whereby sovereignty means internal and external authority (Haddad 2003: 300). Hereby stands external authority for the recognition by other sovereign states and internal authority describes the fact that a single governing authority is acting as the supreme power within a certain territory (Ibid.: 300). Refugees are displaced individuals, who do not belong anymore to a specific territory and therefore are not anymore members of a sovereign state. In other words, refugees only exist between the states and appear as anomalies within the construction of sovereign states (Ibid.: 298). They are betwixt and between. Once they are perceived as outsiders, refugees are often experienced as a threat to the identity of a nation-state and its citizens, rather than people in need. However, it is important to recognise here that it is the creation of nation states, which evokes the concept of refugees in the first place. On that score the concept of refugees added a moral obligation on states to offer sanctuary and allow them entrance to the state`s society (Ibid.: 298). Merkel sees this moral obligation not only by Germany, but also refers to the European Union as a whole.
A second approach to understand Merkel`s Wir Schaffen Das slogan is to relate it to Germany`s national past. Since the unification Germany`s national identity seems to be trapped between a historical consciousness of guilt and a social taboo of a national self-identity. Johnson & Suhr (Johnson & Suhr 2003) call the result of this situation a Culture of
Betroffenheit. That is a culture of deep empathy and a feeling of being hold responsible for
the happenings in the national past. The Culture of Betroffenheit prevents therefore the Germans to shake off their past and progress forwards to a new more confident self-identity (Ibid.: 52). In other words the Culture of Betroffenheit refers to a feeling of guilt and responsibility, which are anchored in a moral sense of society. However, it would be false to comprehend Merkel`s Wir Schaffen Das slogan only in terms of moral compensation. This becomes clear through Junge`s conception of morality as a situation of being for the Other,
and not with the Other. In more detail, a person is taking up responsibility towards the Other by doing a favour. It is of no importance if one shares common ideas about good or evil, or has a shared system of values. Morality is understood here as a gift towards the Other without the obligation to reciprocate and therefore cannot constitute any form of exchange (Junge 2001: 111). Since the idea of moral compensation is misleading, it is necessary to have a closer look on the concepts of guilt and responsibility. Only in doing so, it is possible to link Merkel`s Wir Schaffen Das slogan to the Culture of Betroffenheit.
The two concepts of guilt and responsibility are closely related to each other; however there are subtle differences in how they can be applied. On the one hand, guilt is more likely used to refer to the individual and his or her personal and single actions. On the other hand, responsibility is a much broader concept and unlike guilt refers often to a superior group (Ashenden 2014: 56). For example, given the case of the Second World War then not every German is guilty of the past atrocities, but every German had a responsibility in preventing those. It might therefore be useful to differentiate between political guilt and moral guilt. The first refers to the external and political world and is concerned with a state`s actions, while the latter is linked to the internal world, which includes ideas of conscience and ethics (Ibid.: 61). For example, Adenauer`s policy of Wiedergutmachung after the Second World War is a clear example of political guilt. The payment in form of reparations emphasized a feeling of a collective responsibility of Germans for past atrocities. But after all the feasibility of compensation is limited, since it focuses on material means to balance out a moral wrong (Ibid.: 71). In other words Germany`s misdeeds in the Second World War still resonate as a moral guilt until the present day. The Culture of Betroffenheit therefore must be understood less in terms of the idea of moral compensation, but more as a collective responsibility to insight, penitence and renewal. Merkel`s Wir Schaffen Das slogan is reflecting the culture of
Betroffenheit in its moral dimension as a collective responsibility and is motivated through
both: the future and the past.
The Welcome Culture
The moral approach behind the Wir Schaffen Das slogan found wide support in German society and initiated a movement, which became soon known as the Willkommenskultur. This Welcome Culture embodies the moral sense, which is anchored in the culture of Betroffenheit. In this section I argue that the refugee crisis can be interpreted as a trigger for a German renewal. In the vibe of the Welcome Culture it was not the question of being Deutsch, but of becoming Deutsch. That is to get rid of an old negative image of Germany and replace it with
a new, fresh and more up to date image. In other words the Welcome Culture goes beyond its moral perspective and is challenging common ideas of German identity. I will first sketch a picture of the Welcome Culture through some empirical examples. It is my argument that we have to understand the Welcome Culture as a multicultural policy. In developing this argument I will first analyse the concepts of German citizenship and multiculturalism, before put them in the context of the refugee crisis. Hereby, I hope to show that the Welcome Culture is incongruous with previous notions of German identity and nationhood and leads therefore to a radicalisation of the German population.
The Welcome Culture became manifested in a spontaneously readiness of the German people to help in the Syrian refugee crisis. After Merkel announced to take in the refugees the Munich central station transformed to a hotspot of the crisis. In the spirit of her Wir Schaffen
Das slogan many Germans travelled to the station in order to offer their personal contribution
to the fate of the arriving refugees. This contribution ranged broadly from active volunteer work to assist the officials in the registration process, to the donation of clothes and food. Refugees were greeted like celebrities with applause and admiration for their long and difficult journey1. For instance, Taim a Syrian refugee from Homs describes his arrival in
Germany as unexpected warm and friendly and that he was greeted everywhere with smiles2.
The Welcome Culture did not stop at the central station, but was further carried out through aid organisations, NGO`s and self founded charitable initiatives such as Refugees Welcome. Those organisations took over different tasks in the further integration processes and helped refugees in learning the language or finding an accommodation3. Germany was praised for its social engagement by the international press and at the same time other countries were ashamed for their inaction. In the international media an imago of a solidary, compassionate and friendly Germany was created. It was this presented imago in the international press, which became the trademark of a new German identity.
1 Spiegel Online 2015, Bevor ich vor dem Fernseher weine, helfe ich!, (22/10/16)
<http://www.spiegel.de/video/hilfe-fuer-fluechtlinge-in-muenchen-video-1605510.html>
2 Flüchtlinge Willkommen 2016, Search Racism. Find truth. Interview Taim, (01/05/16)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDQDOaSsbJU>
3 ARD Mittagsmagazin 2015, Initiative Flüchtlinge willkommen mit Erfolg, (22/10/16)
Image 1: ‘German people are welcoming Refugees at the Munich main station’
Source: Romain Geib, free journalist and photographer1
The supporters of the Welcome Culture identified themselves with this invented imago of the new German identity and celebrated the diversity of cultures. Simultaneously, other people, who were against the influx of refugees, demanded publicly a stop of the current migration policy. In response to these forms of xenophobia and racism members of the Welcome Culture organised counter-demonstrations and rallies to set off against anti-refugee movements. In doing so, they hoped to cast damp over any sign of an old and intolerant Germany, which is still stigmatised by the past. For instance, the satirical German television program Neo-ZDF caricatures this new German identity in a song called Be Deutsch2. In this
song opponents of theWelcome Culture are described as authoritarian nationalist dorks and associated with an out-dated worldview of the past. The clip presents those people in the picture of angry farmers and peasants with pitchforks. In contrast, supporters of the Welcome Culture are the true Germans, who stand for a tolerant, modern and multicultural society. Here, the clip shows a diversified group out of transsexuals, Jews, priests, commoners and even women wearing niqabs. The clip exaggerates the social reality, but states also a clear message of a new German identity, which dissociates from xenophobia and racism and therefore from the past. The supporters of the Welcome Culture highlight their goodness in an almost obtrusive way to the rest of the world. It is the recognition and admiration received by outsiders of the own nation state, which lies at the heart of national self-respect and not that of
1 Willkommenskulltur: Hbf München, 5.09.2015 (06/12/16)
<https://www.torial.com/romain.geib/portfolio/91285>
2 Neo Magazin Royale 2016, Be Deutsch! Achtung! Germans on the rise!, (09/04/16)
fellow Germans or migrants (Baumann 1999: 48). In doing so, they establish the Welcome Culture, including its underlying morality and associated attitudes such as multiculturalism as the new sacred attribute of being German.
Theterm Welcome Culture is actually an invention of the German government, which recently established the term in its political vocabulary to describe Germany as an immigration country. The Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (Federal office for migration and refugees) introduced the term Welcome Culture in 2012, as the active design of attractive possibilities for new immigrants, who already have a permanent perspective to stay in Germany. It focused in particular on the initial contact and projects, which developed new innovative concepts to integrate immigrants directly after arrival by providing them with the necessary information of how to get started (Schünemann & Voigt 2016: 6). In contrast to the Welcome Culture of 2015, the Welcome Culture of 2012 aimed therefore on the integration of highly qualified specialists into the job market. By comparing those two forms of Welcome Culture we can identify a shift in the focus of immigration from an economical interest to a socially motivated incentive. This shift is caused through major issues given by societal challenges, including demographic changes, globalisation and most recently the refugee crisis. In the context of these contemporary developments in Germany it became necessary to redesign concepts of identity and citizenship on the basis of a multicultural approach. However, the political implementation of this new immigrant policy fails to incorporate the implications of these processes for the wider society (Eckhardt 2007: 244). In other words, Merkel`s pragmatic Wir Schaffen Das policy leaves out the concerns from a great part of the German population. It is in this sense that the new constructed Welcome Culture challenges previous ideas of German nationality and otherness.
In order to develop this argument further it becomes necessary to derive first an understanding of German nationality and multiculturalism. Nationality, in its most simple way, can be understood as a concept of belonging, which is embedded in national traditions of citizenship. Citizenship denotes both; a status, which draws together notions of belonging, access, rights and obligations and as an institution, which shapes the fundament of wider concepts such as the nation itself and a political community. It is because of these two different perceptions that citizenship is not only a simple ascribed status of legality, but forms a broader discourse of a national identity (Diez & Squire 2008: 566). Furthermore, citizenship is continuously constructed through legal processes and everyday social and political practices. As such citizenship is vulnerable to disruptions and open for remodelling. For instance, the recent refugee crisis could be seen as a disruption of the German citizenship. On
the spur of the moment the Welcome Culture tries to apply a new discourse of citizenship. However, not everybody can identify with this new discourse of citizenship. This in turn causes a fear to lose the own identity and leads to a resistance among big parts of the population. Eventually, those who are afraid of losing their legality try to securitize German nationality through reconstructing national citizenship according to their own ideas and terms. In doing so, they tend to impede the effective development of a post-national form of citizenship (Ibid.: 565). I will return to this subject in the context with the radicalisation movement. For now, I want to focus on how exactly the traditions of citizenship are defined in the German case.
In Diez & Squire`s work (Diez & Squire 2008) about traditions of citizenship they show that the German citizenship distinguishes substantially from other countries. For instance, the German citizenship law can be traced back to 1913 and despite several changes during time it still follows at its core the principle of jus sanguinis or right of blood, which bases citizenship on hereditary grounds (Ibid.: 568). This mode of citizenship in its origin did not grant any voting rights to immigrants even after several generations of living in Germany. On top of that the possibility of having a dual nationality was inconceivable (Eckhardt 2007: 238). Since 1st of January 2000, it is possible for immigrants to receive the German
citizenship, however the conditions to achieve it are quite harsh. One has to be at least for eight years a legal resident in Germany, be able to possess sufficient language skills and be financially independent, as well as commit to the liberal-democratic order of the Federal Republic of Germany (Diez & Squire 2008: 569). A dual citizenship is under certain circumstances possible, but it remains a problematic concept because it is viewed as an irregularity. The German citizenship is therefore of extraordinary character, since it creates a link between a national identity, which is assumed to be incongruous with de facto state territory and the state itself as an institution. In other words German nationality in terms of identity means to belong to a community that transcends the present and to the German state as a nation in its current political entity (Ibid.: 568). The linkage by blood remains therefore the predominant concept in both, the political legalisation and in the public discourse of German citizenship.
Keeping this conclusion in mind, I will now turn to the second part of my argumentation. Multiculturalism refers to the struggle in which political instances and public opinion makers try to recognize cultural differences to a certain extent in the public sphere, without crossing the line of discrimination (Modood 2010: 159). Multiculturalism is therefore a strategy, which is used for either the defence of cultural, and human rights or in defence of
the solidarity of the own nation-state. As such it can be understood as a strategy, which is customized by different actors across academia, the media, politicians and ethnic-religious public actors as an either good or bad condition for the society (Werbner 2012: 197). In other words it is the art of multicultural politics to overcome cultural subordinations by stressing universalism and diversity at the same time. In doing so, the government creates a political arena in which disadvantaged groups, such as ethnic minorities together with local majorities are perceived as one political entity. Hereby, it re-defines citizenship as the citizens duty to embody this multicultural approach to work at local concerns (Ibid 2012: 198). It is in this sense that we can apply a multicultural discourse to the Welcome Culture in the recent refugee crisis in Germany. Concluding: “Rather, than thinking of multiculturalism, then, as a discourse that reifies culture, it needs to be thought of as a politics of equal and just citizenship that bases itself on the right to be different, within a democratic political community (Werbner 2012: 200).”
However, the idea of multiculturalism as a fair and just policy is especially in anthropological circles highly discussed and criticized. In multiculturalism cultures appear as rigid, homogenous and unchanging entities, which are bound to a certain territory. As a consequence cultures are assumed to be equivalent, but yet multiculturalism does not ensure any vertical exchange between different cultures. It implies a political correctness, which glosses over internal social problems within minorities or ethnic groups (Werbner 2012: 198). In contrast the anthropological concept of culture is an interactive, heterogeneous and continuously changing one. People constantly take on new features of other cultures and add them to their own culture. Even in its most conservative form, culture is placing habits into new contexts, for instance ways of speaking, celebrating birthdays or simply its relationship with nature and space. Or, in the words of Gerd Baumann: “If culture is not the same as cultural change, then it is nothing at all (Baumann 1999: 26).” As such, culture is hybrid and permeable and at no time a fixed concept. Hence, any attempt by the state to impose a unified policy such as multiculturalism is failing in its ultimate goal to equalize different cultures in respect to its singularities (Werbner 2012: 198). Altogether, multiculturalism as a radical political program implicates always simultaneously an anti-racism policy. Therefore it is necessary to recognise that multiculturalism and racism are complementary rather than opposed. To put it differently, it is the anti-racism policy of multiculturalism itself, which gives racism ultimately the ability to violate the symbolic and physical integrity of individuals (Ibid.: 199).
So far I have analysed the Welcome Culture as a multicultural policy, which challenges traditional concepts of German citizenship and nationhood. The Welcome Culture embraces cultural diversity by applying a multicultural approach in order to manage the refugee crisis. This evokes a conflict between traditional concepts of citizenship, which are based on hereditary grounds and a post-national form of citizenship. Furthermore, I have shown that multiculturalism as a policy is failing, since racism lies at the very basis of multicultural thought. Even stronger, multiculturalism actually shows the inability of Germany to officially accept immigrants in their whole, including their ethno-cultural implications e.g. their active role in shaping the German culture (Kurthen 1999: 929). The Welcome Culture is therefore more the materialisation of personal ethics, which are directed towards the outside rather than towards the inside. It unveils the wish of the supporters of the Welcome Culture to re-define German identity as post-racist, post-ethnic and post-nationalist in the eyes of all non-nationals (Baumann 1999: 48). Such an essential change of an understanding of German citizenship evokes indispensable criticism and resistance. In the case of the Syrian refugee crisis in Germany there emerged two particular radical movements, which position themselves contrary to Merkel`s Wir Schaffen Das slogan and the Welcome Culture. In the following part I will analyse on how exactly the radicalisation movements did emerge and how they distinguish in their way of thinking from the Welcome Culture.
The Radicalisation Process
The emergence of the Welcome Culture and the new wave of radicalisation are complementary to each other rather than two independent phenomena. The radicalisation process is performed through two particular movements, which I will describe here by presenting several ethnographic examples. Hereby, I argue that we have to analyse the radicalisation movements as a new form of racism and xenophobia, which derives from a post-9/11 context. First, I show how the radicalisation movements perceive the actual events and developments in the refugee crisis. In a second step, I try to get to the bottom of their way of thinking in order to explain why they are contrary to Merkel`s welcome politic. Later on in my thesis I will answer in a final step my main question by looking and explaining why those movements enjoy such a great support among the population.
After the initial euphoria of the Wir Schaffen Das slogan diminished people started to worry about the lasting influx of refugees to the country. Calls were made to return to applicable law and to end Merkel`s policy of an open Europe. Since 1st of July 1993 the right of asylum in Germany has been removed from those, who entered Germany from safe third
countries, including all of Germany`s neighbour states (Bosswick 2000: 49). The asylum law was even more tightened by the EU through the Dublin Regulation. According to this agreement the right of asylum is bound to the country, which the asylum seeker has been entered first within the EU1. In fact, this makes every single refugee, who has entered Germany through the Balkan route, illegal. The only possibility to apply for an asylum on a legal way is to enter Germany via an airport. For many this is rather impossible, since airports are strictly regulated places, which require official documents. Because refugees often lack those documents, they are forced to fall back on illegal methods, for instance professional smugglers (Ibid. 2000: 51). Therefore Merkel`s Wir Schaffen Das – logic evokes together with the Welcome Culture a binary opposition between a moral point of view and a legal justification perspective. Therefore both, supporters and opponents of the Welcome Culture feel right about their position for different reasons. Additionally, the new applied multicultural citizenship added extra fuel to the fire and triggered a suddenly change of the public mood. The consequence was an increasing polarisation of the German public, which became visible in a radicalisation of the population on a political, civil and personal level.
In response to the uncertainty and disapproval of the crisis management in Berlin, opponents of the Welcome Culture organised protests and engaged in forms of arbitrary law enforcements. In order to give an idea about such a radical demonstration, I will bring in the incident in Clausnitz, a small town in East Germany. Here, a bus with arriving refugees was encircled by townspeople on February the 20th of 2016. The mob scared the arriving refugees off with hate paroles and threatening insults. The fear of the refugees was so big, that they refused to get out of the bus and to move in into their new home. On top of the events, the German police had to drag the refugees out of the bus in order to prevent any further escalations2. This example reveals an ugly face of an intolerant and racist Germany, which is completely contrary to the new celebrated Welcome Culture. In addition, Germany experienced a sharp rise in arson attacks on either un- or inhabited asylum shelters. In the period of January 2015 to November 2015 there have been more than 200 different cases of arson attacks in Germany, whereby most of them happened after Merkel`s speech from the 31st of August3. Both examples show how opponents of the Welcome Culture establish a
1 European Council on Refugees and Exiles, 2015, What is the Dublin System, (12/04/16)
<http://www.ecre.org/topics/areas-of-work/protection-in-europe/10-dublin-regulation.html>
2 Spiegel Online 2016, Proteste gegen Asylunterkunft in Clausnitz: Neue Videosequenz zeigt Fehlverhalten der
Polizei, ( 31/03/16)< http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/clausnitz-video-zeigt-vorgehen-der-polizei-gegen-fluechtlinge-a-1078394.html>
3 DIE ZEIT, Paul Blickle et al. 2015, Es brennt in Deutschland, (21/04/16)
< http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2015-11/rechtsextremismus-fluechtlingsunterkuenfte-gewalt-gegen-fluechtlinge-justiz-taeter-urteile>
culture of unpredictability and fear. Regardless of the risk to injure or even kill human beings, they terrorize refugees in the hope that they are too afraid to come to Germany at all. Merkel`s
Wir Schaffen Das slogan divides the German society into two contrary camps.
Image 2: ‘Refugees are frightened by a German crowd in Clausnitz’
Source: Youtube (Screenshot)1
The impact of the division of the German society became soon noticeable on a political stage. In particular two radical movements affected the following events significantly and form together the political camp against the Welcome Culture. The Pegida-movement (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident) as an independent group and the AfD (Alternative for Germany) as a new established political party polarised the fronts and put themselves on the top of the radicalisation movements. Pegida is primarily a protest group with the ultimate goal to prevent the infiltration of their home by the Islam. They have their origin in Dresden a city in East Germany, where Pegida holds on every Monday a demonstration or the so-called Abendspaziergänge against the alleged Islamisation of the Occident2. Their parole ‘Wir sind das Volk’, articulates a wide gap between the current politics and the German people. The parole is an indirect accusation towards Merkel in her propensity to be more concerned with refugees rather than with her own citizens. Both, the
Abendspaziergänge and the parole are an allusion to the Monday demonstrations in the
former DDR in 1989/90 against the regime. The German folk succeeded in bring down the Berlin wall and abolish the political system. In using the same framework of the DDR, Pegida
1 Agressiver Mob “besorgter Bürger“ bedroht Flüchtlingsbus in Clausnitz (Döbeln) 2016, (06/12/16)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyr367tv-jE>
2 Frankfurter Allgemeine, Hans Vorländer 2015, Was ist Pegida und Warum? (21/07/16)
< http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/die-gegenwart/protestbewegungen-was-ist-pegida-und-warum-13863310-p2.html>
emotionalize the content of discussion and creates a strong idea of a national identity. The second movement, the Alternative for Germany exploits those fears and emotions of the public to established a political party. In doing so, the AfD legalizes an ideology of inequality and trivialises right-wing extremism on a political stage. As such, the AfD already established successfully in three Federal states as the anti-refugee party in the parliament, where it campaigns against an undermining of the German culture and identity1.
In order to explain the discourses behind the radicalisation movements I will use concepts of Ghassan Hage and Edward Said and potentially expand them. Ghassan Hage`s concept of radical politics will be helpful to understand the self-conception of the supporters of the radicalisation movements, while Said`s orientalism gives insight into a strong feeling of togetherness or being the folk. Radical politics are born out of societal struggles and crises such as the refugee crisis and represent an alternative way or solution beyond the existing structures of a system. In other words radical politics see a solution not within an existing order, but in transforming the whole society (Hage 2012: 290). As such, they portray and arrange certain features of a crisis in strategic and emotional way to create a general cognitive and affective structure from above. It is in this sense that radical politics are rather imagined, because they do not necessarily rely on empirical evidence of those features. “They derive their particular importance from a specific politico-affective conception of the sources of society ills that a radical subjectivity has invested itself in struggling against (Hage 2012: 291).” The Welcome Culture as a multicultural policy for instance is incompatible with the traditional ideas of German citizenship and must therefore be prevented. The political radical imaginary goes therefore far beyond a specific conception of the world and becomes rather a self-fulfilling investment to it. Hereby, it can be simultaneously described by anti-politics and alter-politics. This implies an oppositional and contra politic, which seeks a radical change through presenting and believing in an alternative (Ibid.: 292). Concluding, rather than understanding the recent radicalisation movements as occasional remnants of the past, we need to look at a more contemporary context.
In times of crises and intensified social conflicts nation states were always worried first in securing the rights and privileges of their own indigenous people. Hereby, everybody who did not belong to the national majority including immigrants, religious and ethnic minorities was seen as an additional threat to the social union (Wimmer 1997: 30). In order to identify easily internal and external members of the state, one applied exclusionary identity-
1 The Guardian 2016, German elections: setbacks for Merkel`s CDU as anti-refugee Afd makes big gains,
(17/04/16) < http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/13/anti-refugee-party-makes-big-gains-in-german-state-elections>
practices based on dichotomies (Haddad 2003: 301). For instance, religious difference has always been a clear mark of otherness. However, since 9/11 especially the Islam and therefore Muslim immigrants were articulated as threatening and dangerous to the physical integrity of Western civilisation (Diez & Squire 2008: 572). After the USA started a war on terror, Western hegemony has produced the picture of an evil Islam, which gave rise to an anti-Muslim policy in Western societies. It is this hegemony, which led to the racially embedded process of securitisation against migrants, refugees and other exclusionary groups in the Western world (Amin-Kahn 2012: 1596). For example, during the early post-9/11 period, Germany focussed aside from a stricter airline security policy on harder conditions for visa applicants and intensified the deportation of non-citizens, who already lived in Germany (Diez & Squire 2008: 573). The AfD and Pegida movement present the refugee crisis as an exceptional situation to the German people, who then evoke the strong need to securitize the nation. In order to answer the alleged needs of the German nation Pegida and the AfD both applied exclusionary identity-practices based on an internalized anti-Islam discourse to recruit their support. Frauke Petry, the leader of the AfD states in an interview:
I think in our country and also in Europe it is us who have to decide, which sort of migration we want to accept in our country. Islam conveys a vision of the state that is totally foreign to that which we know in Europe. It is not we creating division; the division is already there. You get your cultural education … you have to think about how this cultural education, also in terms of religion, agrees with democratic societies in the centre of Europe and we do see there are differences. Islam by itself – with its attitude to democratic societies – is problematic1. – Frauke Petry, Leader of the AfD
Here, culture becomes used as a euphemism for religion, which neatly fits into the multicultural discourse and creates a safe ground for politicians to criticise the Islam. One particular outcome of this transformation is that the Islam is framed as the very antithesis of Western civilisation (Amin-Kahn 2012: 1596). This distinction made between the Islam and the Western world was already discussed earlier in Edward Said`s orientalism. Said makes an epistemological distinction between the Orient and the Occident. This distinction implies the underlying logic of setting oneself off against the Orient (Said 1979: 3). In doing so it creates a collective identity of ‘us’ Europeans against all non-European cultures, which strengthens the idea of superiority. Again, rather than based on an empirical reality, this approach is highly imaginative and shaped by desires, investments and projections (Ibid: 7-8). However, since 9/11 we can identify a new anti-Islam discourse in Said`s orientalism. This anti-Islam
1 DW (English) 2016, Petry`s AfD: Waking up ghosts of the past?, (28/04/16)
discourse still follows the underlying logic of the ‘old orientalism’, but has now completely given up to bring in Muslims and their cultural perception into the fold of Western thought (Amin-Kahn 2012: 1599). This ‘new orientalism’ is accompanied by the rise of white supremacists, which reject multiculturalism and make use of fear and xenophobia to alert about an alleged Islamisation of the Occident e.g. “…an imagined demographic threat to European and Western societies and their values from the hordes of backward and liberty- and democracy-hating Muslims (Amin-Kahn 2012: 1599).”
The dialectic of the new orientalism can be rearticulated in the notion of secularism as a method. Secularism refers to the condition of a society, where state and religion are separated as autonomous entities. Hereby, secularism refers in modern Western states to a more moderate and pragmatic secularism rather than a radical and ideological one. This means that the multicultural state is required to be neutral between religions in order to guarantee equality between them (Modood 1998: 91). This kind of secularism becomes in a sense the civil religion of the modern neoliberal state, which embraces values associated with Western democracies such as freedom, equality, and cultural tolerance. However, the AfD and Pegida use this notion of secularism in their advantage by defining the Islam in anti-democratic terms. Since a society relies to a specific degree on shared ethical values and norms in order to function as a one united society, it cannot tolerate a different cultural perception within its system (Ibid.: 80). This would be a denial of its own identity. The Islam as a culture and not as a religion becomes labelled through the discourse of the new orientalism with negative attitudes such as religious intolerance, gender inequality and inseparability with the state. Because of this the Islam would not only be irreconcilable with Western democracies, but also an endangerment for their existence. In using secularism as a method, Pegida and the AfD are falling back on an already existing discourse of who and who does not belong to Western civilisations. The result is a powerful rhetoric, which translates the imagined other into a cultural reality.
This strategy of stigmatizing the other as a current threat is part of a bigger phenomenon, which we can observe all over in Western societies. Trump in the United States, Le Pen in France, Wilders in the Netherlands, Farage in the UK and Frauke in Germany are all put into the same category of radical populism. But how exactly do we have to understand this kind of populism? The word populist itself is often used by a long-established political class as an insult against an apparent new group of racists. Since, those groups use techniques of imagination to mobilize an alleged will of the folk, the political class would not take populist party`s as a serious matter (Oudenampsen 2010: 10). It is exactly this ignorance of an
old political class, which shows a cultural gap between a low – and high-educated society. Therefore, we need to redefine the polarisation between the supporter of the Welcome Culture or more generally spoken multiculturalists and the radicalisation movement as a confrontation between a low-educated class and a high-educated elite (Van Reybrouck 2008: 15). Populist party`s or groups must be understood in their emergence as a critic on an inappropriate representation of a lower social class in current Western parliaments. Or the other way around, politics are nowadays tightly held in the hands of a liberal elite. This situation is experienced by a lower educated class as a discrimination and exclusion from society (Ibid.: 17). In the following final part of my thesis I will analyse this theory about populism in more detail. It might be then hopefully become clear why populist parties have such a huge success and how we can best deal with them.
The Failing Elite
It is not only Germany, which has to deal with a new emerging class of populists. Also other countries experience radicalisation processes and the rise of new right-wing party`s. In fact, we can observe such movements in almost all countries with a model of neoliberal politics. The Syrian refugee crisis of 2014 was therefore in a certain sense only the last straw that broke the camels back; a stage to unload the over the years accumulated dissatisfaction over the current elite in charge. Populism, in its current form becomes a political tool to emotionalise and finally mobilize this dissatisfaction into a political illusionary. I will first focus on the concept of populism in detail before I analyse how we can understand it as a critic on neoliberalism and a current elite. Hereby, I will argue that populism is not necessarily something new, but descends from an old left-wing protest past. At last but not least, I discuss possible countermeasures against the right-wing populist movements.
Populism is always a politic, which speaks in the name of the folk through an imagined reality and is directed against the establishment (Oudenampsen 2010: 11). Hereby, the imagination is a necessary tool of populism, because it could not otherwise appeal to the emotions and feelings of the people. However, in order to be most effective it is of crucial importance that the imagined is not completely loose, but always linked somehow to an actual reality. Therefore one does imagine an idealised past, where the society was still in perfect order instead of a new political future (Ibid.: 8). This means one remembers a society, where foreigners have not infiltrated the nation-state and the worker class was still involved into political events. Populism implies therefore a strategy of polarisation between a political elite with a multicultural policy and the hard working common citizen, who has built up the
country with his bare hands. In this fantasy the ruling political class is only engaged with abstract politics such as the climate change or the saving of the financial sector with tax moneys, which the common citizen has to pay for (Ibid.: 12). Rather than a realistic representation of the whole society, the term folk becomes here more an expression of a small group, which feels its needs overlooked. In short the common citizen feels betrayed by his own elected representatives. In the current refugee crisis Pegida for example accused Merkel as a Volksverräter (betrayer of the nation) and the press as Lügenpresse (a press based on lies)1. Hence, populism derives its meaning from a social division of the society.
It is therefore necessary to focus more on that particular division in order to grasp the full meaning of populism. Ernesto Laclau describes in Oudenampen’s De verbeelding van het
volk the polarisation between a left elite and a low social class as an internal frontier. As the
internal frontier he understands a strategy of populism to translate the will of the people through imagination and the narration of stories. Therefore instead of giving a real voice to the peoples actual needs and thoughts populism invents a virtual one (Oudenampen 2010: 13). Consequently, this means that populism is not the expression of a gap between citizens and politics, but the very creator of it. Because of this very reason, it is also not possible to ever overcome this gap. This explains the radical attitude of populism, but not the heterogeneous electorate of such radical politics. As long as the gap between citizen and politics is an accumulation of different critic points, the dissatisfaction cannot merge into one unified charge. However, in presenting itself as an empty signifier, populism is able to combine the different critic points into one superior objective. In short, populism creates a crystallisation point. That means one public demand becomes excelled as a unified symbol for all other demands (Ibid.: 13). Laclau speaks of this process as the populist moment, because the crystallisation into one unified symbol cannot last forever. Concluding, populism is in spite of its shadiness an advanced technique of politics to mobilize a heterogeneous group with very different needs and demands in a short-term period (Ibid.: 13).
In the case of the German refugee crisis the populist movements take a clear public stand against Merkel`s migration policy, which must be seen as a part of a greater neoliberal politic. In order to translate populism therefore as a critic on neoliberal politics we need to discuss first the cornerstones of a neoliberal state. First of all the neoliberal state is often associated with the notion of postmodernism. This means, that due the fact of the globalisation of economics, migration, communications and consumption, identities and their
1 Spiegel Online 2015, Pegida Kampfbegriffe: Vokabular wie bei Goebbels, (17/04/16)
< http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/pegida-kampfbegriffe-was-verbirgt-sich-hinter-der-rhetorik-a-1011755.html>
collective purposes are less and less organised territorially by the nation-state (Modood 1998: 84). For the neoliberal state than multiculturalism means the restructuring of identity and citizenship on the basis of multidimensional characteristics. However, the integrity of citizens cannot be touched. Therefore social change of identities must be understood more in a sense of adjusting new lifestyles including the experience of new and strange food, a foreign street image or other points of cultural exchange. Rather than an assimilation of the migrants and other foreigners, the multicultural policy in the neoliberal state can be described as a synthesis between different cultures. That is an interactive integration process between newcomers and old residents to create something new (Ibid.: 88). In other words “… the challenge of the new multiculturalism is the integration of transplanted cultures, heritages and peoples into long established, yet evolving historical national cultures, heritages and so on (Modood 1998: 88).” Through this process old residents might be feel uncomfortable and unsettled with regards to their changing cultural environment. It is here that they develop a feeling of disenfranchisement by the policy makers and start looking for a vent for their dissatisfaction.
This increasing disconnection between politics and citizens in the neoliberal politic shapes the fundament for radical populism. Hereby, radical populism has regardless of the country a broadly comparable constituency and is always related to neoliberal globalisations and class restricting processes, which take place on actual event-based dynamics (Kalb 2009: 209). Of course those processes derive their symbolism in each case from different national histories, memories and traumata, for example as in the German case from the Third Reich. Therefore it is also impossible to determine actual outcomes on local grounds, since populism is a critical junction between real global processes and local histories, narratives and situated events (Mepschen 2015: 65). Radical populism is therefore apart from its national context a fairly interchangeable concept. Because of this, I will bring in here an example of the feeling of disenfranchisement in the Netherlands instead of Germany. In Amsterdam, the municipality is planning on restructuring a certain neighbourhood by replacing low-rent public housing with owner-occupied and high-rent apartments (Ibid.: 60). The district has in the public the reputation of a bad neighbourhood. Rick, a local resident who speaks on behalf of a small white group of resistance, claims that the neighbourhood is quite and respectable and for the greatest part white. In his perception, he feels punished by the local government, because of the misbehaviour of some minority groups, in this case Moroccans (Ibid.: 61). The forced eviction causes a feeling of disrespect and displacement, which leads to a general rejection of a reality or populist imaginary against the local authority. Populism in its current form becomes a rejection of a liberal elite, which fails to translate global processes to local
desires and needs and that embrace an elite multicultural ideology, which uses state power for outright local dispossessions (Kalb 2009: 209). It is in this sense that one can speak of a failing neoliberal elite.
The question here becomes now, how can we possibly resolve the dialectic tension between local citizens who feel excluded from current politics and a neoliberal elite embracing a multicultural policy? The bizarre of this whole situation is that a left oriented elite tries to answer the imagined populist accusations with realism and a voice of reason. On the one side populism acts according to the principle of realising your desires, while on the other side a left elite demands for the reality (Oudenampsen 2010: 8). It seems that the roles of left and right have been switched, whereby an old radical left argues now from a conservative point of view and a new right takes in the position of the radical resistance. Of course then, arguing with facts and the voice of reason will not have any impact on convincing the opposition. The Oxford dictionary has introduced the term of post-truth as its international word of the year 2016 to describe exactly this relationship: “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief1.” For example, in the context of the refugee
crisis in Germany the actual number of arriving refugees is not a major issue for the AfD and Pegida. The very fact that refugees are arriving is enough to spin the wheel of imaginary. However, this technique of imaginary is not exclusively owned by populism. As we have seen previously by Martin Luther King, Obama and also Angela Merkel this imagined and narrative form of politic is seen back in almost all historical political movements. Politic is much more than just the rational consideration of local needs. Moreover, it is an inspirational source to stimulate a process of collective dreaming (Ibid.: 9). In the same way Merkel`s Wir
Schaffen Das – slogan has created a dream of a multicultural Germany. All in all it seems that
we have to invent our own imagined stories in order to meet the new challenges of the new post-truth age.
Conclusion & Discussion
In this thesis I discussed the relationship between the Welcome Culture and the radicalisation movements in Germany during the Syrian refugee crisis of 2014. I showed how the refugee crisis operates here as a trigger for a German multicultural dream. Merkel’s Wir Schaffen Das slogan appealed to a moral consciousness of guilt and responsibility, which is anchored in a
1 The Guardian 2016, ‘Post-truth’ named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries (30/11/16)
Culture of Betroffenheit. This culture has prevented the German people up to the present day to process their own national history. In other words Germany is constantly torn between two opposites. On the one site they are trying desperately to compensate a moral wrong with material means, while on the other side they want to precede with the past and set out to new shores. Now, Merkel’s Wir Schaffen Das slogan seems to have broken through this cultural paralysis and initiated a new movement, which became known as the Welcome Culture. In the spirit of this Welcome Culture people presented a new tolerant, modern and multicultural face of Germany. They celebrated their progressiveness and selfless action in the context of the refugee crisis. Out of all options it was Germany, who offered first a helping hand to the refugees and put all other countries to shame for their selfish behaviour. However, despite praised by the international press the influx of refugees caused an inner societal tension in Germany. Many German people disagreed with the new-implemented political course. They demanded an immediate stop with Merkel’s politic of open borders. After feeling unheard in their needs by the politic they started to take action by themselves and radicalised. Those emerging radicalisation movements were the result from a feeling of displacement and exclusion from the own society by a multicultural elite. Concluding, the relationship between multiculturalism and the radicalisation movements is complementary to each other.
The emergence of radical populism takes advantage of this situation and transforms the dissatisfaction into an assault against an established political elite. Populism is hereby an advanced technique of politics to unite a great heterogeneous group under one imagined goal. Therefore rather than emerging from a gap between a current political class and the alleged folk, populist groups create such a gap through techniques of imagination. In doing so, they intensify the feeling of displacement and disconnection and redefine the gap as a confrontation between a low-educated and underrepresented group and a neoliberal, multicultural elite. However, this technique of polarisation only works as long as the imagined is not out of the blue, but can easily be linked to the reality. In that sense the German case in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis is only one example of how this process of linkage works in practice. Consequently, this means that populism as politic is a universal concept and not a unique phenomenon. However, populism must always be embedded into the national context and connected with local narratives and events. Concluding, populist groups act as a universal empty signifier, which merge local different needs and desires into a superior objective and finally try to overthrow a current established political class. Simultaneously, this characteristic is also the weak point of populist politics, because as soon as they need to specify on their standpoints they loose the ability to bridge
class differences. At last but not least, techniques of imagination are not restricted to populist movements only. As Merkel’s Wir Schaffen Das slogan has shown, it is of crucial importance for politics to inspire people for a jointly cause in order to achieve a real change. In this sense the multicultural approach behind the Welcome Culture does not much distinguish in its nature from radical populist movements. Both groups use ultimately tools of imagination to their own advantage and to realise a dream.
We can agree on the notion that the emergence of radical populism across Western neoliberal states can be viewed as a critic on an increasing political elite. However, it remains the question, what exactly happens when a populist party rises on the very top of the politics. Following Laclaus theory of the populist moment, the movement neutralises itself as soon as it has to put its cards on the table. If this theory is true, has yet to be confirmed. With Donald Trump as the next president in the United States awaits us an excellent opportunity to testify the durability of radical populism.
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Verklaring: Ik heb de UvA regels ten aanzien van fraude en plagiaat gelezen en begrepen [
http://student.uva.nl/binaries/content/assets/studentensites/uva-studentensite/nl/a-z/regelingen-en-reglementen/fraude-en-plagiaatregeling-2010.pdf?1283201371000].
Ik verklaar dat dit geschreven werkstuk volledig mijn eigen werk is, dat ik alle bronnen die ik heb gebruikt zorgvuldig en correct heb aangegeven, en dat ik volgens de regels heb geciteerd. Ik heb dit werkstuk, in deze of gewijzigde versie, niet eerder ingediend voor een ander vak of als onderdeel van een ander werkstuk.
