The world watches with horror as ICE agents murder people on the streets of Minneapolis. Even Germany’s right-wing politicians like Jens Spahn (CDU) are “following developments with great concern,” as he told the BILD tabloid (which I won’t link).
Yet even as German liberals look down at the chaos on U.S. streets, the Federal Republic of Germany already applies many of the anti-democratic rules that Trump is trying to introduce with brutal force.
Masked Agents
In the United States, it is widely considered a scandal that agents of a law enforcement agency are wearing masks. Liberal pundits point out that this prevents any accountability—and if officers are not accountable, then there is no government by the people. The New York Times published this op-ed:
Until now, law enforcement officers in the United States rarely masked their faces… it’s just been accepted that masked policing isn’t consistent with a democratic society. We want law enforcement officers to see themselves as accountable to the community. And we want community members to see officers as approachable… Masks undermine both. They instill fear in the community and encourage a menacing aura of infallibility among officers.
Go to any demonstration in Berlin, and cops will almost always be masked—and will simultaneously attack demonstrators for wearing masks. I’ve never heard a justification, aside from a right-wing fantasy about police officers being a particularly endangered group, in spite of all evidence. As the Times pointed out, this is about instilling fear and creating a menacing aura.
The law in Germany says that citizens expressing their views in public must be accountable to police, or be subject to assault. But police are not expected to be accountable to citizens. How is this, by any definition, rule of the demos? Yet I have never seen a German liberal call for democratic norms.
Absolute Immunity
Fascist gremlin Stephen Miller has claimed, falsely, that ICE agents enjoy “absolute immunity” as they carry out their campaign of terror. In Germany, police enjoy an immunity that is near absolute—one expert called them “legally untouchable.”
If you are illegally assaulted by police in Germany, the only agency you can turn to is the police themselves. And as soon as you try to press charges, they will press charges against you, in order to justify their violence. The cops will then investigate themselves and in something like 99 percent of cases will close the investigation without any result. Then your only option is to sue the public prosecutor in an attempt to force them to press charges. If you do make it to court, judges will almost always believe the police.
So even in the most disturbing cases, like when German cops shot and almost killed a 12-year-old deaf girl two months ago, the officers will not face any consequences. Again in the Times, the conservative columnist David French criticizes the “web of immunities” that prevents citizens from suing when the federal government violates their rights—yet such discussion is mostly absent from Germany’s political scene.
This is why the far-right group Turning Point UK can gloat: “German police give a masterclass in how to deal with ANTIFA!” Germany already has the kind of lawless police violence that Trumpians dream about—and virtually no pushback in the public square.
Deportating Children
As Daniel Bax points out in the formerly left-wing newspaper taz, Germany is also in the midst of a “deportation frenzy”—the previous government of Olaf Scholz promised to “finally deport people on a large scale,” and the current government of Friedrich Merz promised still more deportations.
Before Trump, ICE agents were not allowed to wait outside courthouses to snatch people who were pursuing legal status. In Germany, however, it is absolutely normal to trick people with an appointment at the immigration office—and detain them on the spot for deportation. And while ICE thugs lurk outside schools hoping to grab parents, German police will often go into classrooms and kidnap small children.
Germany’s citizenship laws are straight out of a Trumpian fever dream: while Trump is trying to eliminate birthright citizenship, which was secured in the constitution after the defeat of the slaveocracy, the Federal Republic has never used any legal principle but the “right of blood.” This means that people who were born in Germany and have never lived anywhere else can be deported to countries they’ve never set foot in—the kind of “remigration” that Nazis aim for.
Strikes
If Spahn is indeed “concerned” about the scenes on U.S. streets, then he should introduce reforms to stop such brutal state violence from taking place here. We need full citizenship rights for everyone who lives here and basic accountability for police.
The images from Minneapolis are horrifying—but it is no less inspiring to see countless people of all backgrounds coming together to defend the entire community against state terror.
Racist campaigns, whether from Trump or from Merz, are intended to divide the working class, so that we can be more easily exploited by capitalists. We can assert our power by uniting and, with strikes, shutting down production.
Red Flag is a weekly opinion column on Berlin politics that Nathaniel has been writing since 2020. After moving through different homes, it now appears at The Left Berlin.
