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8 February 2024

Germany and its discontents

Protests, purges and the crack-up of a nation.

By Adrian Daub

It was a scene straight from Babylon Berlin, the Netflix show set in early 1930s Germany about a moribund democracy and the rise of fascism: a meeting at a historic countryside lodge near Potsdam, a few miles from the “Wannsee Conference” villa, attended by right-wing politicians, conservative moneymen, lawyers, doctors and entrepreneurs. Even a board member of the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache – a club for people who complain about too many Anglicisms in the German language – was present. Held on 25 November 2023, the meeting teetered between the ridiculous and the demonic.

Its purpose was to connect deep-pocketed donors with right-wing political projects. A foremost theme among them was “re-migration”, a word that has dominated political discussions in Germany ever since the investigative magazine Correctiv first reported on the conclave at the Landhaus Adlon. “Re-migration” designates nothing less than the deportation of “foreigners”, and of Germans with “foreign” roots. An Austrian neo-Nazi, Martin Sellner, the event’s keynote speaker, presented plans for a “model state” in northern Africa where expelled populations (about two million) could be moved. There were proposals for contesting future election results in case the “wrong” kinds of citizens voted. 

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