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The Firewall Next Time
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Illustration: Thomas Swinkels
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The German federal elections are taking place this coming Sunday and the possible outcome is all that anyone can talk about in Germany. But whoever wins, whatever colors the next coalition government will wear, the question of what happens next will have been determined by how we got here in the first place.
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To that end, the Diasporist has convened a forum that analyzes the genealogy of the moment. How did we arrive at this juncture, one in which the SPD and the CDU are jumping over each other to prove their commitment to anti-migrant politics while the far-right AfD is polling a solid second? We have contributions from Simon Strick, Achan Malonda, Ben Miller and Mina Jawad. You can find all individual pieces of the forum below and read them on our website now.
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To continue the conversation, the Diasporist invites responses to these contributions. We’re looking for thoughtful rebuttals, spirited disagreements, proposals for different lines of inquiry, alternative diagnoses built on facts – more than just critique for the sake of critique. Write to us: [email protected].
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Simon Strick
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"The tired Brandmauer discussion is, in other words, an item of nostalgia, and current demonstrations against the AfD/CDU collaboration address a marginal problem, a conflict of the past: The German consensus is already ethnonationalist and post-European. Its natural expression is black and blue, the CDU and AfD colors, respectively."
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Achan Malonda
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"So if I, as a Black German — a contradiction in terms of the German self-image, because apparently a German passport is not enough — am to take a position on the Brandmauer, then at most I can state that there is no room for me on either side of it. The Brandmauer was unable to protect any of the people who died in asylum shelters set on fire by Germans in the 1990s. Nor did it protect Oury Jalloh, who was murdered by the police when he burned to death in a prison cell in Dessau 25 years ago."
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Ben Miller
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"The economic model of the Federal Republic — low wages, competitive prices on exports — has broken under the combined pressures of post-Covid inflation and a global population increasingly less likely to pay a premium for “Made in Germany.” Angela Merkel’s disastrous tenure as Chancellor maintained standards of living through the financial crisis but paid for it through an invisible austerity that choked off future investment. Germany has an aging population, terrible Internet, complex bureaucracy, broken trains, feudal and provincial universities. All its problems arise from the Scylla and Charybdis of austerity and racism."
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Mina Jawad
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"So it should be noted: today’s rage and warnings about the rise of the right, backsliding, and the return of fascism are self-deception, strategic calculation, and an attempt at political whitewashing. It is only a question of time until the liberal center, under the guise of democracy and progress, breaches the dam themselves."
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