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Month: December 2024

The Critic who stood up for Madwomen

Obituary: Sandra M Gilbert (December 27, 1936 – November 10, 2024)


27/12/2024

Sandra M Gilbert died last month. Gilbert was best known as the co-author (with Susan Gubar) of the pioneering book The Madwoman in the Attic, which caused literary scholars to rethink how women were portrayed in 19th Century literature. Recovering academic Richard Bradbury looks back at  how Gilbert helped reshape how we look at the novel.  

When I started to study literature at a British university in 1975 the three core courses were modern(ist) English literature, the European epic and Medieval English literature. During that year not a single set book had been written by a woman. That this is now unimaginable is as a result of years of work – teaching, researching, writing – on the part of students and academics. That work has reshaped the understanding of literature both in universities and – probably more importantly – beyond.

Sandra Gilbert’s work, most often in collaboration with Susan Gubar, played an essential part in that transformation. As I was starting my studies they were beginning work on a book that would, in time, transform many departments of literature. That change took two forms: first, a new contextualisation of nineteenth century ‘classic’ texts and, second, the introduction of other texts as a way of reimagining those ‘classics’.

Let’s look briefly at the way that worked. My first example is their most famous. Jane Eyre. The title of their book – The Madwoman in the Attic – shifted the readers’ attention away from the march of Jane from rebellious child to “Reader, I married him” via a challenging relationship with Rochester. Shifted our attention, as it were, from the marriage failure in the chapel in the grounds of Thornhill to the obscure spaces at the top of the house. Now, Jane’s previously reliable and transparent voice became marked by prejudice as she sees the first Mrs Rochester as a crazed beast. Gilbert and Gubar fix on this moment to reveal the previously smooth surface of the novel as pitted by the acid of history.

Now the first Mrs Rochester becomes a prisoner enraged by her husband’s misogyny and racism whose act of destruction as she burns the house becomes a final gesture of defiance. Now, the designations of misogyny and racism are upended.

This wasn’t, of course it wasn’t, the work of these two writers alone. The male (yes, it needs to be said even now) guardians of literature and history were being questioned, elbowed aside, by a generation of thinkers and writers. Kate Millet, Marilyn French, Elaine Showalter, Jane Marcus, Gillian Beer, and many more besides, were reclaiming the past. And in doing so began to change the present and, more tenuously, the future.

Even more obviously this small work was a part of the much larger, more important, upsurge of second wave feminism that swept through the 1970s and on into the 1980s. From our place in 2024 it is hard to look back past those achievements and the ways in which they changed the landscape of political, intellectual, social discourse; of life. Yet if we don’t do that we will be disempowered in our attempts to forestall the current political, intellectual and social assault on those changes.

Back to that book. This alteration of perspective, this way of reading aslant of the foregrounded rhetoric was also part of the wider development of reading strategies that took into account the existence of the reader as a constructive part of the text’s meanings. That plural is crucial, acknowledging as it does the many existences, the many subject positions, of readers.

There is one element of the commentary of Charlotte Brontë’s novel that I do have to take issue with; namely, the lack of reference to Jean Rhys’s novel The Wide Sargasso Sea. A novel written through much of the 1950s and 1960s in rural isolation but which exploded the understanding of the earlier novel as it gave voice to the first Mrs Rochester. Why Gilbert and Gubar leave it unmentioned is a mystery to me, but it is an obvious lack. An absence without easy excuse.

After this upending of the canon’s reception, they moved on to modernist literature, with the three volumes of the aptly-titled No Man’s Land. Again, as someone ‘educated’ in modernism in the 1970s, the revelation that there would have been – in the polemical words of Diana Souhemi – ‘no modernism without lesbianism’ – was revelatory. More accurately, the revelation that the core technique of modernism – the inaccurately named ‘stream of consciousness’ – was both developed and named by women writers, threw my very partial understanding of that writing into new territories. Places where, nearly fifty years later, I still continue to explore, read, teach, think and write. It was their work that gave me this gift.

More than that. Sandra Gilbert, with Susan Gubar, expanded this work still further when they set out to edit the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women; the traditions in English. One more time their work changed perceptions of literary tradition. Here, and perhaps even more challengingly, they argued that women’s writing was there. From the early days. My own days with the Gawain poet, with the Piers Plowman author, with Chaucer were now seen to be not so much lacking as in urgent need to the presence of the writing women who were ignored, dismissed into anonymous obscurity. Their critical work made the oh-so very obvious point, the so-easily avoided point, that women write. And that women’s writing should sit alongside the writing of men.

I have studied and taught and written about literature for nearly fifty years. The earliest years of that seem to me now a time of such partial knowledge that it seems better described as fumbling ignorance. What their work did, in a version of a contemporary anthology, was “split my world wide open”.

Not just their academic writing and work, but also in one moment Sandra Gilbert’s demonstration that academic work is not enough on its own. The commitment needs to travel out. At a time when sexual harassment of students was, if not routine, then certainly common she and a group of colleagues protested the indulgent treatment of a harasser. And then resigned their jobs when the indulgence continued. The details of that case continue to be obscure but at a time when a colleague told me quite openly that he told female students that their marks depended not just on their academic work but ….., their stand was remarkable.

And I haven’t even mentioned her poetry.

Sandra Gilbert was remarkable, in many ways, and I thank her for the changes she brought to my understanding of what has been my life work. That unimportant and yet oddly vital business of making sense of literature.

Until Friday, He Was One of Us

Even if he came from Saudi Arabia, the murderer is a radical Islam hater. Many refuse to believe this — because he is not the only person like this


24/12/2024

The terrible attack in Magdeburg appeared to be the act of an Islamist because of its target. It reminded us of the 2016 attack by Anis Amri on the Christmas market in Berlin. But since the identity of the 50 year old murderer has become known, we know that he was a fan of Geert Wilders, Elon Musk, and the AfD. He hated Angela Merkel, Muslims and Islam. His online profile on X is ideologically unambiguous. Because he believed that Germany was promoting the “Islamisation” of Europe, he wanted to punish the country and to kill as many people as possible.

With such perpetrators, you always ask yourself: how did they become radicalised? Which preacher of hatred influenced them? Who shaped them ideologically? In which circles did they move? In this case, unfortunately, you can find the relevant literature in every German book store. Radical variations of this way of thinking is available on the internet, in movements like Pegida, and in parliament with the AfD, who gained 20% of the votes in Sachsen-Anhalt [translator: the State containing Magdeburg]. Their conspiracy ideologies go from a “great exchange” of the population towards the infiltration of the country by radical Muslims — ideas which the murderer in Magdeburg clearly shares.

It would be a euphemism to bestow the title of “Islam critic” on the perpetrator, as some media are doing. We are clearly talking about a paranoid hatred of Islam. With his attack, he locates himself alongside those right wing terrorists responsible for terror attacks in 2011 in Norway, 2017 in Canadian Quebec, and 2019 in New Zealand. In the case of Breivik, these consisted of attacks against public authorities and a social democratic youth camp, in the other two cases against peaceful Mosque communities. The murderer in Hanau also acted from anti-Muslim/racist motives, when he shot nine people dead in two Shisha bars in February 2020.

Extreme Right Wingers Deny their Ideology

Because the perpetrator of Magdeburg originally comes from Saudi Arabia, and he targeted a Christmas market, many people do not want to believe that he might be a radical Islam hater. But people from mainly Muslim countries or who were themselves once Muslim can be prone to such ways of thinking. The murderer of Munich, David Sonboly, who in 2016 killed 9 largely young people because of hatred against Muslims had an Iranian background. The writer Akif Pirinçci who appeared at the anti-Muslim Pegida demonstrations and spread hatred against Muslims, comes from Turkey. There is a simple reason why former Muslims in Europe can take on extreme right wing attitudes: they receive applause and confirmation for it and that strengthens them in their delusions. A pinch of self-hatred is possibly also there.

The ideological closeness of the right wing extremists, from the AfD to Nius, from Martin Sellner to Elon Musk, to the murderer of Magdeburg is naturally uncomfortable. Some of them claim that he merely had “psychological problems” and therefore went on a “Amoklauf” [crazed action], not a terror attack. Or they deny that the perpetrator is an ex-Muslim and AfD supporter, and accuse him of simply pretending.

They speculate that the perpetrator must have always been an Islamist sleeper. They believe: once a Muslim, always a Muslim. The fact that the murderer attacked a Christmas market is enough for them to imply that he could have acted from different motives than those which he falsely claimed. The fact that he comes from Saudi Arabia is enough for them to once more denounce a “wrong migration policy”. In other words, right wing extremists are using the act of a right wing extremist to continue to disseminate their hatred.

The Murderer was a Public person

But the most important question is: why could the attack not be stopped? Because the murderer was a public person. On X alone, he had over 46,000 followers and many contacts in the international radical anti-Muslim scene. Journalists also followed him and he gave interviews to several media outlets in recent years. He was known to many authorities, his profile picture shows a machine gun, and he had announced many times that he wanted to commit a spectacular act and to use violence. There were warnings, but they remained unheard.

The authorities and his milieu underestimated his radicalisation. The question is: why? One possible albeit uncomfortable, answer to this question is that the perpetrator did not stand alone with his hatred against Muslims. His beliefs are so prevalent in Germany that he did not appear to be peculiar. He was one of us — until on Friday evening when he drove a car into a Christmas market.

This article first appeared in German in the taz. Translation: Phil Butland. Reproduced with permission.

“We strongly oppose the expulsion of our comrade Ramsis Kilani from the party”

Statement by the Network Palestine Solidarity in Die Linke Berlin


We, the Palestine solidarity network within Die Linke Berlin, strongly condemn the expulsion of our comrade Ramsis Kilani from the party, Die Linke.

As a platform within Die Linke Berlin that is committed to engaging with the issue of Palestine/Israel and campaigns for a just peace in the region and an end to the genocide, we welcome Ramsis’s announcement that he will appeal against the decision of the state arbitration committee.

The federal arbitration commission of Die Linke will now have to decide. We support Ramsis and are committed to ensuring that consistent solidarity with the Palestinian people continues to have its place in Die Linke.

Ramsis was not expelled because of one or two controversial statements, but because of his consistent solidarity with the Palestinian people and their just struggle for equal rights and democratic conditions throughout the region and because he openly condemns Germany’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza – just like us.

For over a year now, we have been taking to the streets against the genocide with our party’s banners. We organise events and raise awareness about the humanitarian and political situation in Palestine and Israel. We organise rallies and collect signatures against arms deliveries at information stands and through door knocking. At general assemblies, state and national party conferences, we argue in favour of a policy of international solidarity. We do all this as members of Die Linke and will continue to do so. We are committed to ensuring that Die Linke can be an anchor for all those who want to end the genocide and displacement in Palestine.

We will continue to stand up for a democratic, equal and self-determined coexistence for all people between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean and advocate for an open culture of discussion within the party. We invite all those in solidarity to join us. We look forward to meeting you!

Contact: dLB_PaSoNe@pm.me

Genuino Clandestino

A movement for food sovereignty and assembly democracy


23/12/2024

In a network of currently around 50 territorial initiatives from Palermo to Trieste, farmers, students, artisans, artists, political activists and cooks in Italy are organizing themselves in the fight for food sovereignty and self-determination. It is a fight for the free processing of peasant food, for the establishment of local, inclusive assembly democracies and participatory guarantee rules—against state and European policies in favor of the large food industry. Originating from an alliance of critics of the global marketing of agricultural and food culture and left-wing autonomous Centri Sociali (cultural centers that mostly emerged from occupations), Genuino Clandestino has been implementing anti-capitalist practice in local economic cycles since 2010, overcoming the separation of city and countryside, showing solidarity with the struggles of migrant workers and demanding land as a common good.

Genuino Clandestino is a movement of civil disobedience that seeks neither a fixed identity nor legal or institutional recognition, but rather is proudly subversive. It understands interrelationships and open communities as an ongoing political act. In their manifesto, members write as a central demand the right to freely process peasant food, which has been expropriated by a neoliberal system. The document reads, “Anyone who recognizes themselves in the principles of this manifesto can disseminate it and use it to justify their actions”. In this respect, Genuino Clandestino goes far beyond the representation of small farmers’ interests, but practices a new social model of exchange relations, responsible cooperation and activist public relations. Genuino Clandestino propogated in the cities of Bologna, Rome and Naples and then found nationwide resonance among small peasant producers, craftsmen and do-it-yourselfers, as well as other precarious workers (such as artists). The language of the network is a radical, utopian-activist one, capable of transcending generations. Their public spaces are small markets in the cities.

Giovanni Pandolfini, who has been involved with the Genuino Clandestino network since its beginnings over ten years ago, himself cultivates four hectares of land near Montespertoli in Tuscany. If he were to cultivate this small plot of land in line with market requirements, i.e., for the food industry, he would be able to grow one or two varieties of vegetables, cereals or fruit at most in order to produce enough for the market. Instead, he keeps two cows, eleven sheep (which produce 20 liters of milk a day) and grows various plants. Until 2016, he sold his produce at a monthly farmers’ market and collaborated with buying groups run by the Associazione di Solidarietà per la Campagna Italiana. He then managed to initiate a Florentine chapter of Genuino Clandestino with a few colleagues and structure it in such a way that they were able to host the first market in San Freddiano in 2017. “Thanks to Genuino Clandestino, we have succeeded in unleashing the fantasy of a possible other life,” he says today.

In practical terms, for him and the other now almost 50 activists in the Florentine network, this means more work and work that connects. Meetings are convened twice a month to discuss political and organizational issues (markets, solidarity actions, discussions, etc.) and technical and practical issues (seeds, prices, water, soil, mutual support). The producers meet twice a week at the public markets, on Fridays from 3 pm in Piazza Tasso in San Freddiano and on Mondays in Gavinana – including subsequent cleaning of the squares. There are also numerous other meetings on the farms with customers, colleagues and interested parties to exchange ideas and assess product quality together. They continue to activate a network of solidary relationships and exchange. With their presence at the markets, they not only generate income, but also carry out political work between the city and the countryside.  The network in Florence, named after the farmer Jerome Laronze who was shot dead by a police officer in France in 2017, organizes demonstrations in the city center, collaborates with striking workers and autonomous trade unions, with Fridays for Future and, among others, with Mondeggi Bene Comune, a collective that occupied a farm that was up for sale and now manages it communally. Free scuole contadine (farmers’ schools) are organized here and the farmers’ radio station Wombat is run by the colective. While the Genuino Clandestino markets in Florence have so far successfully asserted themselves in a social environment of solidarity, new initiatives face more difficulty. in Pistoia, the municipality refused the network a public space in the city center. They instead gather on Saturdays in the outskirts next to an ARCI (network of self-managed former worker’s recreational facilities), offering vegetables, cereals, flour, fruit, bread, honey and home-baked goods.

Since the 1960s, the Italian state has been the sole guarantor of food health. At the same time, in 1964 the feudal mezzadria system of land management that prevailed in many parts of the country was banned. It allowed small farmers with 5 to 15 hectares of land to remain independent if they gave the large landowner half of their yield. With the end of mezzadria, many farmers had to leave the land. In the last 20 years, two million farms have been abandoned in Italy. The land has been sold to large-scale entrepreneurs or to investors who do not work the land at all, but can still pocket the EU’s land subsidies

(Incidentally, the Catholic Church is still the largest landowner in Italy to this day). In Tuscany there were still 52,146 farms in 2010, ten years later there were only 20,540. Farmers with less than 10 hectares of land were the most likely to give their property up. The abandonment of small-scale land cultivation has immense consequences for the ecosystem in the form of land degredation and wildfires. From 2010 to 2020, the olive harvest fell by 15.7 % and the chestnut harvest by 75 %. The meadows on the mountains have become overgrown by 50%. 60% of farmland is now cultivated by 10% of farms.

In traditional agriculture, the processing of rural raw materials, i.e. the transformation of milk into cheese, grapes into wine, grain into bread, the fermentation of meat and vegetables, was an essential part of self-sufficiency. But this value-added production was ended, expropriated, with the introduction of the state monopoly on food quality. Farmers now only supply basic products at the lowest cost. Those who do not meet the standards of the food industry are not allowed to offer food outside the private sector. Biodiversity and the ecological transformation of agriculture are not possible without the reappropriation of farmers’ food sovereignty, concludes Giovanni Pandolfini. Genuino Clandestino is an alliance that aims to reshape the use of urban and rural spaces on the basis of practices such as self-organization, solidarity, cooperation and care for the land.

Instead of national and EU standards, Genuino Clandestino practices autocertificazione participata, a participatory self-certification. To this end, producers and co-producers (i.e. consumers) meet again and again and guarantee the quality of what is offered on the markets by exchanging knowledge, mutual education and assistance. The participation guarantee is a transparent self-regulation that generates community, actively involves people in the food and distribution chain and creates trust. Anyone who participates in the Genuino Clandestino markets must take part in these assemblies. This process is not legally recognized. It is legitimized by collective agreement and solidarity. How many people are now active in the network? Giovanni Pandolfini answers: “We could be 500 or 5,000 or 50,000, but we will always be a thorn in the side of the system.”

What are the CDU Promising this Election?

Leading polls, their election manifesto promises tax cuts, more deportations, militarisation and undoing both the Selbsbestimmunggesetz and citizenship reforms


22/12/2024

On December 17th, the so-called “Union” of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Bavaria-based Christian Social Union (CSU) released their joint 80 page election manifesto, “Political Change for Germany”. Its contents are especially relevant since the Union, and thereby the CDU as leading partner, is well ahead of its competitors in current polling. The CDU will likely be an indispensable and leading partner in the next coalition to form the German government, following the February 23rd national elections.

The CDU ran Germany’s government for 16 years under Angela Merkel, before their main historical rival the SPD took over under Olaf Scholz. Scholz’s popularity has plummeted through his first term, and the SPD is currently polling in third place behind the AfD.

The CDU’s new leader Friedrich Merz will require a coalition partner though. Since the CDU is unwilling to work with the far-right AfD, they will look elsewhere. The neo-liberal FDP is a natural ally here, but they had a disappointing time in the current Ampel regime and a scandal and drama-filled exit. The FDP’s ability to even crack the 5% threshold required to make it into the Bundestag is in question. 

This has led to the somewhat ironic possibility of allying with the ever-rightward shifting Grüne, who Merz has recently claimed holds a similar foreign policy to his party. Should the Greens not get enough seats, a “Black and Red” coalition with the SPD may be necessary, albeit awkward.

Merz is himself an interesting figure, a clear careerist politician who held a long-time dislike for Merkel after she demoted him in 2002. In his recent speech to the party he claimed he would have been satisfied as a “simple Bundestag member” (einfacher abgeordnete), despite the fact that he became leader of the party only upon his third time running for the position. 

Merz has been critiqued for his position on women. He mostly speaks of violence against women in relation to racialised migrants; and critiques the current government’s promotion of women to high roles he considers them unqualified for. With a pseudo-feminist spin he explains that these promotions “aren’t doing women any favours either.” 

Now, seemingly on his way to leading the German government, the CDU’s election programme lays out what Merz hopes to achieve when he finally becomes chancellor. It makes it clear that a CDU election victory would see austerity through tax cuts, increased militarisation, and serious steps backwards for social issues.

Austerity and Neoliberalism

The CDU previously made clear its intention to maintain a balanced budget through the so-called debt-brake. As Der Spiegel has reported, this would be difficult considering their plans to cut taxes and increase military spending. To achieve this, the CDU’s election programme has social cuts and other forms of austerity scattered throughout it, justified through claims of ‘increasing efficiency’.

One example is eliminating the current Bürgergeld system (social benefits), and building something new in its place. This comes after recent reforms to replace Hartz IV with Bürgergeld. The CDU’s plans are vague, and do not state what the replacement would be, only that “Wer arbeiten kann, muss auch arbeiten” (who can work, must work), and that they intend to increase support for job centres.

The programme also announces a so-called ‘modernisation’ of working hours. Germany currently has strict limits preventing workers from working more than 8 hours a day, or 48 hours a week (with some exceptions for overtime, etc), but the CDU wants to get rid of the daily limit. This would allow employers increased flexibility to overwork their employees.

They will also overturn the recent Lieferkettengesetz (supply chain law) which sought to limit human rights violations used in the production of goods bought in Germany. The law was the result of intense campaigning, and only passed in 2021.

On several points, the CDU expresses its support for the status quo, seemingly hoping to put fears aside. One is their promise to maintain Germany’s current retirement age of 66 years old. More problematic is healthcare. While many will likely breathe a sigh of relief that no cuts appear to be coming, maintaining the status quo while nurses have been striking for better conditions is hardly a generous promise.

Perhaps the most ridiculous proposal the CDU has for saving money is at universities, where they suggest that campuses rent out their equipment for a profit. Beyond the logistical headache of such a proposal, the idea undermines the very idea of a university based on public good, taking ongoing privatisation to a new level. 

In the realm of housing, the CDU recognises that they have something of a crisis. Rather than take on predatory landlords or building social housing, they call for increased privately-financed housing construction. To this effect, they will reduce the regulations for construction of new buildings. While they claim to want to do so responsibly, the echoes of Grenfell Tower in London are noticeable. Reducing regulations will likely lead to the construction of dangerous buildings, to be filled primarily by low income families.

Tax Cuts

The other side of the CDU’s austerity measures is their proposed tax cuts. While they explicitly state they want to lower Germany’s corporate tax, they also often use tax cuts to replace greater investments.

Housing is an example of this. Rather than investing in social housing or similar measures, the CDU promises tax benefits for landlords who charge below average rent in a locality. This clearly benefits the landlord rather than the renter, and actively encourages slum lords. Rather than creating decent housing, the faceless corporation or distant business man will save money on their run-down apartment block, just because it’s in a nice neighbourhood.

A similar approach is taken to Kitas (daycares). Rather than increasing funding, or improving social services to support children and parents in precarious situations, they offer tax cuts for Kitas themselves and for single parents. Considering daycares are already understaffed to the point of calling unlimited strikes, which were in turn banned by a court, tax cuts are no replacement for major reinvestments.

Finally, the CDU wants to cut the Solidaritätszuschlag, a tax which essentially serves to redistribute money from the richest states towards the poorest. The FDP tried to get rid of this for a while, as did the CSU based in Bayern, a rich state which pays large amounts through the tax.

Saving the Climate Through the Free Market

Other austerity measures are masked as necessary for protecting the environment. The CDU recognises the importance of the Paris Agreement, and the need to move away from coal. Their strategy for climate protection is best summarised in their own words: “mehr Markt, weniger Staat” (more market, less state). They claim that allowing the free market to compete for the cheapest energy will help the climate, as if that isn’t the very system which destroyed our planet. Predictably, this means cutting taxes.

The election platform says it will reduce taxes on electricity. Since much of Germany’s electricity is produced by coal, it is unclear exactly how this will help the environment. Likewise, while they want to make transport cheaper, their actual proposal includes reducing CO2 costs, not exactly as climate-friendly as, say, investing in better public transportation.

The CDU also states its intention to increase the use of nuclear energy, something the German climate movement has fought against for decades. Likewise, they support the use of carbon trading, another free-market supposed solution to the climate crisis. Finally, reminiscent of the Berlin CDU’s latest election campaign, the federal party also wants to protect the auto industry and car users.

Militarisation

When we turn to its plans for the Bundeswehr, the CDU’s austerity plans suddenly puff into smoke. Merz has reportedly been jealous of Scholz’s work remilitarising Germany, and wants to take the mantle on himself. The CDU plans to increase the army’s personnel from 180,000 soldiers to 203,000, as well as instituting more public oaths and other forms of support for German soldiers.

While their programme doesn’t make concrete budget suggestions, it’s clear they want to spend more as well. While NATO demands its member states spend 2% of their national GDP on the military, the CDU states this is a lower limit of how much they will spend.

The CDU also points to a slow implementation of some sort of conscription, although again details are vague. They want to implement a year of community service alongside military conscription, and appear to be planning on reimplementing the German system in place until 2011. Then 18 year olds would have a choice of serving in the military or some sort of social service.

Other military proposals include the CDU’s support for the stationing of American long-range weapons in Germany.

Abortion and Queer Rights

Despite assurances they want to protect women when talking about ‘Islamists’, when it comes to abortion rights the CDU drop this protective role. They make their position clear in stating their full support of the Paragraph 218, which makes abortion a criminal offense, despite some leeway in practice. 

They justify this by claiming that 218 was the product of a long negotiation between different parts of society, when in reality the law is a relic from the year 1871. Maintaining Paragraph 218 would continue the current situation of heavily limited access and restrictions for abortion.

The CDU’s proposal for trans rights is also bleak. Their programme openly states an intent to revoke the Selbsbestimmungsgesetz (self-determination law), which made the limited improvement that people could change their name and gender at the registration office without a letter from a mental health professional. 

Perhaps more dangerous than the revocation itself, they justify their stance (rooted in the party’s right-wing Christian roots) by drawing on the far-right narrative that queer rights are somehow a threat to children. The section revoking the Selbsbestimmungsgesetz is titled “Protecting kids and youth instead of identity politics”, and discusses the “volatile period of puberty”. It is hard to see this as anything other than a far-right dog whistle.

They also state that a Zweitberatung (second consultation) is required before adults change their gender. There are already swathes of medical documents needed, including documentation showing at least eighteen months of therapy. Seemingly, the CDU states that on top of these eighteen months a second medical professional’s opinion is needed, adding to the needed legal and medical loopholes for affirmation.

Recht und Ordnung

In the section titled ‘law and order’, their election programme rolls back other recent liberal changes. To begin, they state that they want to revoke the Ampel’s limited legalisation of cannabis, claiming that it protects dealers and puts kids in danger.

Likewise, the partial victories which activists secured in mandating police to portray identification numbers, will also be undone. They also plan to revoke the requirement for police to show identification when asked. This gives police officers increased ability to remain anonymous and unidentifiable when they commit crimes and abuses.

There is also a tech-bro aspect to the CDU’s programme on Artificial Intelligence, demanding it be given bureaucracy-free space for innovation. Clearly, they want to make Germany into some sort of tech capital, and they hope to be able to rely on private capital to do so.

They point to AI’s potential in Germany’s Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (Government Ministry for Security and Information Technology, BSI). While they want to increase the power of the BSI, even giving it an influence similar to the Verfassungsschutz (internal security), they also want to automate its data analysis through AI. Considering the regular scandals regarding AI’s racism, it doesn’t take much imagination to predict the effects of such a move.

Citizenship and Visa Reforms

The CDU intends to revoke the Ampel’s citizenship reforms. This would mean longer waiting times before people can apply for German citizenship, and revoking the possibility of keeping a second passport after receiving a German one. It is unclear whether they would also make it more difficult for people seeking permanent residency, or undo some of the new forms of visa which the Ampel introduced. 

Key for the CDU is that integration comes before someone receives citizenship. This is their justification for reintroducing longer waiting times for German citizenship.It also leads them to stress that people must have a high level of German in order to receive citizenship. It is unclear what exactly they consider to be a ‘high level’.

The CDU also plans on implementing the recognition of Israel’s Existenzrecht (right to exist) as a precondition for receiving German citizenship, in line with the Staatsraison. While this has been implemented in some states already, the CDU would apply this across the country.

For people with dual citizenship and those living in Germany with Aufenthaltstitels (residency permits), the CDU plans on introducing new ways for these rights to be stripped (removing citizenship from people without a second passport is much more difficult, legally speaking). Those accused of supporting terrorist organisations or threatening the democratic order, both accusations often thrown at left-wing groups, could lose their right to live in Germany. Added to this, anyone seen to be pushing for an ‘Islamic state’ could also see dual citizenships or Aufenthaltstitels revoked.

The CDU would also include antisemitic criminal offences, this likely includes Volksverhetzung charges (which protesters often receive at Palestine-solidarity demonstrations) as grounds for deportations. Even people claiming asylum could be deported for such charges, they claim.

Migration and Borders

Unsurprisingly, Merz’s CDU distances itself from Merkel’s welcome of Syrian refugees in 2015. They propose multiple ways to  militarise Germany’s borders and prevent people from entering the country, including by ending family reunifications, and increasing deportations of those already here.

At the German border, the CDU states its intention to maintain border checks in place indefinitely. For the EU borders, the party states that it wants to give more personnel and power to Frontex, the corporation responsible for drones which gather information to support the use of pushbacks in the Mediterranean. 

Further, they plan to assigning Frontex the responsibility of ‘protecting’ sections of the border, giving them ‘territorial authority’ (hoheitliche Befugnisse). The exact implications of this are unclear, but clearly mark an increase in power for Frontex. It makes them legally accountable and further limits the already low possibility for legal challenges to abusive practices.

Another change the programme plans is that people facing deportation orders would be held by the Bundespolizei until their deportation. Beyond the inhumanity of imprisoning people simply for seeking safety, tactics of physically delaying deportations often win crucial time for migration lawyers to collect and submit documents which prove that their clients have the right to stay in the country. But streamlining the process of deportations, the CDU would eliminate checks and balances lawyers can use to support people.

The CDU would also follow the Ampel in deporting people to Afghanistan, and states it would deport people to Syria as well. The programme names the need to identify more ‘safe countries of origin’, i.e. countries deemed safe enough that those who fled from there to Germany could be legally returned. The process of ‘identifying’ more countries doesn’t mean better research, but simply lowering the standards of what is considered a ‘safe country’.

Further, the CDU calls for an EU-level reform to allow for the creation of third state holding centres. This mirrors the Tory party plans in the UK to send people to Rwanda, and Meloni in Italy’s plan to send people to holding sites in Albania. Both these attempts faced court challenges, and the CDU seemingly intends to side-step this issue by simply changing the laws. Exactly where Germany would send people is unclear, but they imply somewhere outside of Europe.

Differentiated Treatment of Religions

While advocating for an ‘Islamic state’ would be reason enough to strip citizenship, the party sees itself as protecting Christian holidays and Sonntagsruhe (Sunday Calm). It is the Christian Democratic Union, after all. There are also noteworthy differences with how the party refers to discrimination towards different groups in its programme.

Antisemitism gets several detailed paragraphs of denunciations and statements of intent. But there is no mention of the CSU’s willingness to work with someone who carried antisemitic pamphlets around during his youth. These paragraphs are then followed up by a single paragraph about repression of Muslims. The word Islamophobia is not used throughout the document, but is most noticeably absent here. The closest they get is stating “Wir dulden keine Abwertung von Muslimen” (We tolerate no degredation of Muslims).

Yet when it comes time to speak about ‘Islamism’, the CDU’s programme makes up for its earlier lack of attention. They plan on shutting down mosques deemed to preach hate or antisemitism, thereby increasing the policing of Islamic institutions. They also wish to restart the government’s expert group on ‘political Islam’. It is perhaps unsurprising that they don’t plan on starting an expert group on ‘political Judaism’, although it could be argued that the CDU is by definition an expression of ‘political Christianity’.

Its plans for fighting antisemitism unsurprisingly focus on protecting Israel instead of Jews in Germany. They plan on making denial of the ‘Existenzrecht’ of Israel criminally punishable, since it is part of Germany’s Staatsraison. The authoritarian undertones are apparently justified in the fight against Israelhass. 

The controversial IHRA definition also plays an important role in their plans. The definition was recently the subject of protests in Berlin when the local CDU sought to force cultural and artistic workers to sign on to the definition to receive state funding. Now at the federal level, the CDU is proposing making all civil society organisations recognise both Israel’s Existenzrecht and the IHRA definition in order to receive state funding. While the attack on the arts in Berlin failed, they will now be redirected towards all civil society groups across the country.

Conclusion

The wide-ranging effects that the CDU programme would have on German society if implemented are frightening and cause for anger. There is a chance that they would be moderated if the party was forced to form a coalition with the SPD to form a government. However, considering how difficult the CDU has found it to differentiate its policies from the current regime, it is hard to imagine any major effect.

Should basic rights and recent victories be protected — whether the Selbsbestimmungsgesetz or right of asylum — any CDU-led government will need to be widely opposed. These immediate and urgent aspects are important. As crucial is opposing the austerity measures which would strip safe housing and continue to slowly destroy Germany’s hospitals and Kitas, not to mention reduced building regulations putting families at risk for generations to come. There is plenty of work for the Left to do.