Terms sound harmless at first
What right-wing extremists mean by “remigration” and “globalists”.
January 13, 2024, 2:44 p.m
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Right-wing radicals use fighting terms that come in pseudo-scientific garb. However, they have nothing to do with science, but rather with the aim of verbally smuggling anti-democratic ideas into the mainstream.
When people talk about “globalists” and “remigration” in right-wing circles, like-minded people and extremism experts immediately know what is meant. To outsiders who are not familiar with the vocabulary of the scene, these terms may initially sound harmless, perhaps even scientific. Behind “globalism” lies the conspiracy narrative – often with anti-Semitic tinges – that a global elite is allegedly working in secret to destroy national and cultural identities.
In the right-wing extremist context, “remigration” means that a large number of people of foreign origin should leave the country – possibly under duress. At the same time, the term is so vague that – for example if there is a threat of a lawsuit – you can at least try to excuse yourself by saying that, for example, you are only aiming at better enforcement of the obligation to leave the country for people without the right of residence.
In addition, the word can have very different meanings depending on the context. For example, a historian research team from the Free University of Berlin examined the “remigration of German Jews from Latin America to the Federal Republic of Germany between 1945 and around 1970.”
“Terms hide their racist core”
The efforts of some politicians to inject right-wing fighting terms into the general discourse when talking about migrants are particularly noticeable. For example, there is talk of “invaders”. The term stirs up fears. The domestic policy spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group, Gottfried Curio, speaks of a “rush” and “illegal migrants”.
The Expert Council for Integration and Migration (SVR) warns against the use of such terms. He recommends not talking about illegal or irregular migrants, but rather about “irregularly staying migrants”. In a press release on the classification of the Saxon AfD as a confirmed right-wing extremist effort, the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution of the Free State states: “In this context, leading representatives of the state party regularly use ideological combat terms of the right-wing extremist scene in public discourse, such as ‘The Great Exchange’, ‘Umvolkung’ or the demand for ‘remigration’. These terms also hide their racist core and their origins in National Socialism.”
It becomes particularly problematic when democratic politicians also use right-wing populist rhetoric. In an interview last December, the sociologist Wilhelm Heitmeyer answered the question of what effect this would have: “The dangerous thing is that the adoption of right-wing rhetoric leads to it becoming normalized. And what is considered normal at first can hardly change afterwards still be problematized.”
AfD uses criticism to counterattack
In the early years, leading party officials tried to prevent AfD members from using certain problematic terms in public, but the strategy now looks different. Terms that belong to the jargon of the so-called New Right – which includes the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, groups such as the Institute for State Policy in Saxony-Anhalt, the One Percent association and the magazine “Compact” – can now also be found in speeches by AfD MPs Hold the plenary hall of the Bundestag.
Ruben Rupp, a member of the AfD in the Baden-Württemberg state parliament, says it is necessary to “implement remigration quickly and decisively.” At the same time, AfD politicians are trying to raise doubts about whether the Office for the Protection of the Constitution at the federal and state levels is concerned with securing the free, democratic basic order. Last November, MP Martin Reichardt, for example, criticized the fact that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution was targeting “anyone who speaks of population repopulation in this country.”
Sven Kachelmann from the AfD youth organization, Junge Alternative, complained in 2019 that an ethnic-cultural popular term – “is generally viewed as unconstitutional”. In addition, AfD politicians are trying to give the impression that criticism of the use of terms from the right-wing scene is not a warning against the infiltration of extremist ideas, but rather just excessive political correctness. The honorary chairman of the AfD, Alexander Gauland, said in 2019: “We, the AfD, are committed to not only preserving freedom of expression, but also fighting against so-called political correctness and taboo topics that left-green ideologues want to force on us with a raised finger .”
Renate Töpfer, the managing director of the Allensbach opinion research institute, is also a critic of narrow opinion corridors. In an essay for the “Libertas – Yearbook for Freedom of Expression” in 2021, she stated that it is bad when “citizens have the impression that they are being watched and evaluated more and more and are exposed to an often small-scale educational process – even if it is the best intentions”. From their point of view, that doesn’t mean that everyone can say anything and even spread hatred and incitement. Quifer argues that it is something completely different when a society “submits itself to generally accepted norms that are considered sensible.”