
Germany’s New Far Right
In Germany, a "modernized" far right is marrying neoliberalism and racism. What will be the Left's response?
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In Germany, a "modernized" far right is marrying neoliberalism and racism. What will be the Left's response?
As Israeli tanks rolled into the Sinai in the 1967 war, West Germany saw itself marching alongside them. Even former Nazis could identify with Israeli expansionism — and used this support to absolve their own pasts.
German politicians often boast of having atoned for their ancestors’ crimes — but then claim that antisemitism is an ill imported by migrants. Far from a model, German memory culture has created an exceptionalist myth that Germans understand racism best.
Germany’s leaders have given unconditional support for Israel’s war in Gaza — but also demanded that immigrants do the same. The rhetoric of German atonement for the past is being used to silence left-wing Jews and blame antisemitism on immigrants.
In 1952, West Germany paid reparations to Israel — not as compensation to Holocaust survivors, but in the form of supplies to the Israeli state. Coming at the same time as denazification reached its end, the move had little to do with moral atonement, and everything to do with whitewashing West Germany's international image.
Europe’s partial ban on Russian oil is forcing states to look for alternative energy sources. But Berlin’s shifting positions show that Germany's concern is its own power on the world market — with green issues little more than a fig leaf.
After 1945, the Soviets soon replaced Germans as the State Department’s main enemy in Europe. Washington’s ever closer ties with Bonn drew on the logic of the Cold War — but also on the private networking organizations where business and political elites met.
A decade ago, Germany’s renewable energy transition was seen as a model for the rest of the world. Today much of the working class has turned against all things green. What happened?
In the 1980s, German institutions began to seriously confront their country’s past. For historian Enzo Traverso, German reactions to the destruction of Gaza show that they failed to draw the right lessons.
Even as mass atrocities pile up in Gaza, Germany has banned pro-Palestine protests and offered unqualified support to the Israeli siege. With few exceptions, Germany’s media-political sphere isn’t just silent about Israel’s crimes — it actively supports them.
The Jerusalem Post has proposed that Germany pay off its remaining Holocaust reparations in military hardware for Israel. No financial compensation can make up for history's greatest crimes — but it shouldn’t be used against Palestinians in the present.
Wealthy countries don’t want to pay climate reparations, but they’re going to have to. COP27 officials are currently grappling with who will pay for climate-related catastrophe and how. They could look to postwar Germany for a model.
In Nazi Germany, industrialists built vast fortunes from slave labor and stolen Jewish property. In postwar West Germany, they were allowed to keep them — with denazification doing little to trouble those who had profited most from the regime.
Through Angela Merkel’s reign, neoliberal European integration provided the scaffolding for Germany’s export-led growth. But war on the continent and a series of crises have tested this model’s limits, producing splits within Olaf Scholz’s government.
Berlin’s city government has moved to deport four pro-Palestine protesters. Even as centrist parties warn against the far-right threat, they introduce the powers beloved by authoritarian leaders.
German police shut down a Palestine solidarity conference last week, the latest in a long line of repressive moves. The anti-Palestinian witch hunt is rooted in a political culture that stigmatizes left-wing radicalism while indulging the far right.
Sunday’s German election brought victory for Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats. Despite the fragile cease-fire in Gaza, the incoming government threatens even sharper repression against the pro-Palestinian movement.
Egon Krenz told Jacobin about his time as East Germany’s last Communist leader.
Seventy years ago today, Germany’s debts from World War II were written off. Today climate activists around the world are protesting in front of German embassies to demand the cancellation of the debt of the Global South.
In Germany, conservatives responded to the high-profile trial of a left-wing activist by creating a panic around the rise of left-wing extremism. But it is neo-Nazi violence that has actually increased in the country, and the far-right that has institutionalized itself.