A familiar violence is brewing in the heart of Europe. The numbers reveal only what has surfaced so far. A quarter of the voting population now openly support the AfD, a party classified by the security services as ‘right-wing extremist’ due to their Islamophobic rhetoric and white-supremacist affiliations. Boosted by the mainstream press and the endorsement from the Nazi-saluting billionaire, the xenophobic message is broadcast across Germany once more.
Traditional conservative parties, the CDU and CSU, while reluctantly distancing themselves from the AfD, have adopted the same Islamophobic stance wrapped in a more ‘respectable’ language. In complete disregard for the lessons etched into their own Grundgesetz, the CSU have declared that Islam has no place in Germany. The CDU, having finally shed their liberal skin, publicly declared any calls for a ‘Free Palestine’ as terrorist sympathies. Their violence is sanitised and bureaucratic as they push legislation to strip dual nationals of citizenship based on their political views. So effortless is their rejection of civil rights that it would send their oligarch friends in the White-house into a jealous frenzy.
A more unexpected xenophobic turn came from the centre-left alliance under former chancellor Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD). After a stabbing incident in Solingen, afraid to lose votes to the anti-immigrant wave sweeping the country, Scholz promised Germany mass deportations. This concession gave the racists all the proof they needed for the otherwise unfounded narrative of ‘the violent immigrant’. Riding this wave into right-wing populism, he promised to strengthen the borders of the fortress Europe – borders which already claim the lives of 8 000 migrants every year. And as if reading from the Trump script, the SPD oversaw the deportation orders for several EU citizens for participating in peaceful demonstrations – no charges, no trial and no global outrage.
Across the German political spectrum, in a mixture of performative Holocaust guilt and opportunism, parties have embraced the settler colonial hierarchy on which Israel was founded, with Arabs and Muslims at the bottom of their order. With revisionist logic and wishful thinking, the Bundestag passed a resolution that frames anti-Semitism as an imported middle-eastern issue. By adopting the fictional IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which includes all criticism of the state of Israel, they got the outcome they were looking for. The resolution was sharply criticised by human rights monitors as antagonistic to Arabs and Muslims and simultaneously anti-Semitic for conflating Judaism with the state of Israel. The resolution was passed with over 95% of votes.
In Germany, to wear a keffiyeh is to risk arrest and deportation. To publicly mourn the Nakba is illegal and yet when the AfD march through immigrant neighbourhoods to intimidate they call it freedom of speech. The message to the Arabs and Muslims of Germany is clear – you are at the bottom of our racial order, our human rights do not apply to you. Germany now records 5 Islamophobic incidents every day.
This perfect storm of Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment has thrown Europes largest economy back on a path of institutional racism. The wider fallout from alienating 5 million Muslims in Germany from their civil rights will undoubtedly be felt in the coming decades.
But the selective repentance, this weaponisation of Holocaust memory, serves not only to justify the suspension of civil liberties at home. It conveniently forms a theatre of morality to mask ongoing imperialist projects and to evade historical responsibilities. True atonement for the horrors of the Holocaust would include taking responsibility for the over 300 000 Europeans that moved to Palestine after World War Two and the Nakba that followed, displacing 750 000 Palestinians from their land. The victims of German genocides in Africa know not to hold their breath waiting for justice.
Colonial Amnesia
In Namibia, the German legacy of genocide is not forgotten. In a blueprint for the Gaza genocide, the pretext for this genocide was an anti-colonial uprising that killed 100 German settlers. The mass murder that followed wiped out 80% of the Herero and 50% of the Nama people, over 70 000 killed, for daring to resist colonial rule. Germany’s recognition of these atrocities, more than a century later, was embarrassingly absent of any formal reparations or land redistribution. To this day, Namibia remains in an apartheid-like inequality with 48% of Namibia’s land in the hands of just 5000 white settlers – 0.3% of the population.
The suppression of the Maji Maji rebellion in Tanzania reeks of a similar stench. Deliberate starvation was weaponised against the Muslim communities that rebelled against the colonisers. Captain Wangenheim’s words—“Only hunger and want can bring about final submission”—echo in the blockade of Gaza and in Germany’s vetoes in contempt of international law. 300 000 murdered, no reparations on the horizon, no memorial in Berlin.
When Elon Musk, the settler son of apartheid capital, fans the flames of European fascism and demands that Germany “move beyond its past guilt”, what he means is this: that Germany must stop pretending, and embrace its role in the white empire once again. And the disenfranchised Germans are listening.
In defence of genocide
In April 2025, the ICJ announced an extension of Israel’s deadline to submit a defence against the allegations of genocide brought by South Africa and supported by the majority of the world’s countries. Germany as one of the passionate defenders of Israel has been proudly diluting, stalling and vetoing calls for immediate ceasefire and sanctions on Israel. While the ruling is inevitably not going to be in Israels favour, with German sponsorship the killing can continue for another year.
The international order that was implemented after WWII, once meant to protect vulnerable groups, is now being subdued. The right to armed resistance against occupation, the blanket ban on collective punishment and withholding of aid are all conveniently ignored by the German political establishment, left to right. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Euro-Med Monitor are all screaming ‘Genocide in Gaza’ and calling out German complicity. They fell for the theatrics of ‘Nie Wieder’.
At home, repression became policy and civil rights monitors took note. Palestinian flags are banned, solidarity groups outlawed, Jewish activists arrested, Arab youth surveilled. These tactics are not new to us in the Kurdish liberation struggle. The banning of Kurdish resistance symbols and closing of book publishers, what should have triggered a constitutional crisis, was casually gifted by the German state to their friend in Türkiye. Add it to the list of ethnic cleansing campaigns sponsored by Germany.
Germany’s Islamophobic turn cannot be divorced from its colonial past or its present-day imperial commitments. The AfD’s rise, the CDU’s xenophobic mimicry, and the SPD’s repressive populism are symptoms of a deeper pathology: a state apparatus that has never abandoned the hierarchies of race and empire. While the world’s gaze is fixed on the Trump administration, it is time to recognise Germany once again as a powerful xenophobic and authoritarian force in Europe.
The post The Perfect Islamophobic Storm first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kaveh Najafi.