After the incident in Solingen, in which four people lost their lives in a knife attack, the standard answer from the whole political landscape was tougher migration politics and rabble rousing against refugees and people seeking asylum. Solingen is being used above all to create an atmosphere of racist scapegoats – above all in the heated election period in Eastern Germany in September.
The extent to which this narrative will be repeated after Olaf Scholz’s statement “We have to deport more people and faster” remains to be seen. But since the knife attack, we have heard uninterrupted insinuations by politicians from all large parties that the most dangerous people using knives are all Islamists.
In the Bundestag, a Green politician said “the poison of Islam does not just reach the heads of people abroad – it also reaches people here”. Later she claimed that this was a slip of the tongue, and she meant to say “Islamism”. Nonetheless, this is what she said.
In the mainstream media and the state courts, it seems that the terms Islam and Islamism are being used as synonyms, as we can see in the coverage of the closure of the Blue Mosque in Hamburg and of a cultural centre in Frankfurt-Main.
Mass deportations as an answer to Solingen and Mannheim
The German government’s answer to individual acts of violence in Solingen and Mannheim serves to present German migration and asylum politics as both the cause of and the solution for individual violence. The “traffic light coalition” is carrying out a brutal shift to the right in its migration legislation.
Originally, they did this together with the CDU whose demands on migration are barely distinguishable from those of the essentially Fascist AfD. But now the CDU has withdrawn from talks on migration because they say that the proposals by the coalition parties are not severe enough.
CDU chairman Friedrich Merz posted “Es reicht” (enough), and is now demanding a complete suspension of the right to asylum for people fleeing Afghanistan and Syria. Meanwhile, Sahra Wagenknecht demanded the Chancellor should send a stop signal to the world – ‘the Willkommenskultur (culture of welcome) is over, we can’t manage it, don’t even start’.
In talks with the SPD which by-passed the government, Merz called for no more taboos, and said that everything must be considered. He would use the “national emergency” to carry out changes to the German constitution. Dual citizenship should be banned. This would make it practically impossible for many people to gain German citizenship, as some countries do not allow you to give up your original citizenship.
Racism hides the question of distribution
Above all the CDU is blaming the coalition’s current migration politics for the knife attacks. And yet shortly after the Solingen killings, a German woman carried out a similar knife attack in a bus in Siegen. The only reason that there were no deaths was because three Muslim women overpowered the attacker. There was no need here to call a national emergency.
Merz also claims that people seeking asylum are the only reason why the situation in and around nurseries, schools, universities, medical practises and the housing market is more catastrophic than ever before. It is clear that this is racist agitation and scapegoat propaganda by a politician who, as a former board member and lobbyist for Blackrock – the largest asset manager in the world – is not really interested in a society of solidarity.
It is not asylum seekers who make decisions about investments, wages, and public centre work contracts, but the state. It is not asylum seekers who decide how high rents are in cities, and how high the land prices are in the countryside, but a profit-seeking market of competing large companies and investment funds. It is not asylum seekers who overload hospitals, medical practices and the health system, but the government’s dismantling of critical infrastructure and comprehensive healthcare provision.
Budget crisis comes to a head
In 2022, Germany shifted €60 billion of unused credit from the Corona emergency fund into a new “climate and transformation fund”. Here the Bundestag, with the votes of the coalition parties, retrospectively passed a supplementary budget for the financial year 2021. The CDU/CSU voted against.
The Federal Constitutional Court ruled that this behaviour of the traffic light coalition had violated the constitution. They based their verdict in particular on the evasion of the so-called Schuldenbremse (debt brake).
The hole in the 2025 budget amounted to a figure in the tens of millions, and led to a redistribution from below to above. Instead of cutting social spending, the state guaranteed tax relief to the rich and big business.
The quarrel in the traffic light coalition about how the missing money can be raised ultimately hangs on the question of the extent to which the state can put the burden upon working people. There is no discussion about taxing the rich. Instead further repression against welfare recipients will be used to fill the hole in the budget.
Racism divides in the face of overwhelming conditions
The racism which is currently rampant is a clear strategy of diversion from the real causes of social worries and fears. It diverts the working class from the real cause of a lack of investment in the social sector. The political parties are counting on racism, and hounding marginalised and vulnerable people to drive a wedge between working people. They want to divide parts of the public who produce all social and private wealth – wealth which is not produced by Friedrich Merz, Olaf Scholz or the Nazi Björn Höcke.
The increasing impoverishment of broad parts of society is leading to enormous fears of social decline. The dismantling of the social sector is increasing the gap between poor and rich even further. The latest so-called “Mitte-Studie” (study of the middle class) calls this phenomenon “Marktförmigkeit” (market-formedness), and says that this is “released” by the massive insecurity in “times of crisis”. According to this study, it is exactly these insecure “market-formed people” who are open to right wing propaganda.
For Marxists this is nothing new, and we won’t get tired of insisting that the political and material relationships in which people find themselves form their consciousness about the political system. Racist slogans, a Fascist leadership cult, and even extermination fantasies take effect as a drastic alternative in the light of the inability of all mainstream and left parties to handle the crises of the capitalist economy. The absence of a socialist opposition to the capitalist and parliamentary system combined with scaremongering and division paves the way to a further shift to the right.
Capitalism cannot be social
The planned cuts in social spending lead to a critical and life-threatening situation for large parts of the population. The rising cost of living is rising while people’s consumption is being transported directly into the pockets of rich bosses and shareholders.
The current racist insinuations against asylum seekers, our neighbours and colleagues, as promoted by Blackrock lobbyists like Friedrich Merz are not based in fact. It is not true that lower social spending will be solved by the full removal of the right of asylum, nor that the money “released” will flow into necessary public sector structures and dilapidated infrastructure. Neither will it result in the expropriation of housing companies like Deutsche Wohnen, the nationalisation of energy companies and the consequent dependence on the market.
Racism in general, and anti-Muslim racism in particular are in the sharpest sword used in the 21st century by capitalists and their mainstream politicians to divide the working class and weaken their organisations.
The racism of the mainstream parties only serves to further intensify the crisis of the capitalist economic system. The livelihood of the middle class and small entrepreneurs, in the form of young apprentices, is increasingly deported and taken away, Through increased competition, the existential fears of many more will grow, and Fascism will seem an attractive answer for many of these isolated middle classes as a way of apparently overcoming the crises.
Anti-racist workers’ struggles more necessary than ever
Workers’ struggles which have already been announced at Volkswagen, in the 2025 public sector bargaining round, at nurseries, schools, Universities and Deutsche Bahn must be carried out in a consistent anti-racist manner.
Growing and expanding social movements were always a point of attraction for working people. It is our task as anti-racists and as socialists to provide answers to the crises and their causes. We must consistently oppose wars, weapon delivery and rearmament. We must consistently oppose anti-Muslim racism and antisemitism. We must build broad alliances to confront the far right and to reduce – then fully prevent – their influence on society.
All this combined with a radical criticism of capitalism can cut the ground from beneath the far right – ground which for weeks the mainstream parties have been making fruitful for Fascist organisations. The racist basis for incipient Fascism is currently being channeled into wider society. .This basis can still be opposed and its foundation can be destroyed. To do this, our anti-racism and our solidarity in the fight against oppression and underpayment must be indivisible.
This article first appeared in German on the Sozialismus von Unten website. Translation: Phil Butland. Reproduced with permission.
