What We Can Do Now, Apart from Evacuating the Place and Walling It Off

43.8 percent.

39 out of 83 seats.

There are election results that make you take a deep breath, have a cup of coffee, and then calmly ask yourself what should be done.

And there are election results that make you go looking for the cement mixer.

Evacuate Saxony-Anhalt. Reactivate the Anti-Fascist Protection Wall. Deport AfD voters to the other side. Close the borders.

So far, so good.

Just need to get that cement mixer loaded.

Unfortunately, by the time you pour in the first bag of cement, it occurs to you that we have tried this experiment before. Even the name “Anti-Fascist Protection Wall” has already been taken.

That was the term the GDR used for its barrier against the West, particularly the Berlin Wall. Supposedly, the wall was there to keep fascism out. In practice, its main achievement was keeping its own population in.

The fact that precisely those regions which once lay behind this “Anti-Fascist Protection Wall” are now occasionally referred to as “Dark Germany” or even “Nazi Germany” gives the whole affair a degree of historical irony that even a satirist would struggle to improve upon.

I prefer the term “Neufünfland” – roughly, “New Five-Land”, referring to the five eastern German states. Not because it explains anything. But at least it is a clever bit of wordplay. I first encountered it in feuilleton columns by Jens Jansen in the magazine Disput. Whether Jansen actually coined it, I do not know. He is where I learned it, at any rate.

But even the finest piece of wordplay does not solve a political problem.

You cannot evacuate Saxony-Anhalt. You cannot wall off Thuringia. You cannot declare five German states a political quarantine zone and then congratulate yourself on having neatly sorted right-wing extremism by geography.

Especially since right-wing extremism is not some naturally occurring eastern German phenomenon.

Right-wing extremist, right-wing populist and authoritarian movements exist throughout Germany and far beyond it. Their networks, narratives and digital echo chambers are not terribly impressed by borders anyway. So anyone mentally rebuilding the former inner-German border has not merely come up with a highly questionable idea – they have not even picked a particularly useful border.

The cement mixer can keep running, though.

We are simply going to build something else.

Because an anti-fascist protection wall is not such a bad idea once you stop imagining barbed wire, watchtowers and orders to shoot.

A democratic society needs protection from those who sort human beings by origin, skin colour, religion or sexual orientation; who turn political opponents into enemies; who want to decide who belongs to the people and who does not; who intend to use democratic institutions in order to hollow out those very institutions afterwards.

Against that, we really do need a protective wall.

It just does not run along a former national border.

It belongs to the house of democracy.

And as with any house, the prettiest façade is of little use when the roof leaks, the pipes are rotting and nobody has bothered to repair the broken heating downstairs for years.

It is therefore not enough to remind people at regular intervals that democracy is a splendid thing.

They need to be able to experience it.

When the bus does not run, the school is crumbling, there is no doctor, affordable housing is scarce, an application sits around for six months, the swimming pool closes, and apparently there is never any money for anything, while politics is perceived as some distant activity taking place elsewhere, a space opens up for other people to fill with their simple explanations.

Broken roads do not automatically turn anyone into a right-wing extremist. Nor do unemployment, low incomes or fear of social decline explain why one person votes for the far right while the neighbour living under the same conditions does not.

Human beings are more complicated than election posters.

Fortunately.

But a democracy that makes itself visible in everyday life mainly through its failures makes things unnecessarily easy for its enemies.

It is therefore not enough to drop a development programme into a structurally weak region every few years, screw a sign to it, smile for the press photograph and then drive away again in the official car.

People need accessible doctors, schools, public transport, housing, work, culture, places to meet and the experience that their region has a future.

They do not need a democracy that exists exclusively in ceremonial speeches on Sundays.

Trust in democracy also grows when people experience this:

Something works here.

I can make a difference here.

I am needed here.

Democracy must not only be defended.

It has to work.

And it has to be capable of saying no.

There is a remarkable reflex in the way we deal with right-wing extremism.

We must not scare people away.

We must take their concerns seriously.

We must “meet them where they are.”

For years now, everybody has been getting picked up somewhere. By this point, half of Germany ought to be sitting on the bus.

Of course we need to understand why people vote the way they do. Anyone who refuses to understand anything will not change anything either.

People do not vote for the far right for one single reason. Fear can play a role, resentment, actual or anticipated loss of status, a desire to belong, anger, protest, authoritarian attitudes, racism, or the longing for a simpler world in which every problem comes conveniently supplied with someone to blame.

That needs to be examined.

But understanding and agreeing are two different activities.

Nor do we have to declare people politically illiterate and explain to them that they have voted “against their own interests”. People have different interests, weigh them differently and make decisions that everyone else remains perfectly entitled to consider utterly ridiculous.

Among other things, democracy is the condition in which this is possible.

But when someone claims that other human beings are worth less because of where they come from, they do not need yet another person gently asking whether perhaps they have merely been misunderstood.

You can also simply say:

No.

That is not true.

And I disagree with you.

An astonishingly concise form of democratic participation.

Nor does it help to borrow the language of the far right and then imagine that you have somehow stolen their business model.

When right-wing extremists spend years declaring certain groups of people to be a social problem and democratic parties eventually adopt the same terms, the same images and the same definitions of the problem, the extremists do not become redundant.

They become validated.

Of course migration, asylum, integration, internal security and the limits of what the state can provide may and must be debated.

Those are real political questions.

But there is a difference between arguing about specific problems, rules and solutions and declaring human beings themselves to be the problem.

Anyone who labels every discussion of migration right-wing extremist brings democratic debate to an end.

Anyone who adopts right-wing extremist narratives in an attempt to win back right-wing extremist voters allows somebody else to decide the language in which that debate takes place.

And anyone who tries to defeat the original by offering a slightly friendlier copy should not be surprised when the customers decide to buy the original after all.

You do not defeat a political narrative by retelling it.

And you certainly do not defeat fascists by making room for them.

If there is one thing I have learned about fascists, it is this:

You cannot simply step aside and hope that they will then leave you alone in return.

That is not how they work.

Every step aside creates space.

When the first person in the village pub stops objecting because he is tired of arguing, the next remark becomes a little easier.

When the next person eventually stops going there altogether, another dissenting voice has disappeared.

When someone leaves the sports club because the atmosphere has become unbearable, those who created that atmosphere remain.

When people withdraw from local politics because they are threatened or intimidated, it is not the people making the threats who disappear from local politics.

Their opponents do.

And eventually a completely false picture emerges:

Apparently everybody here thinks this way.

No.

You simply cannot hear the others anymore.

That is precisely why, when we ask how to deal with right-wing extremism, we must stop staring exclusively at the people who shout the loudest.

We need to look at those who have grown quieter.

At people who remain silent out of fear.

Who retreat into their homes.

Who stop going to the village pub.

Who stay away from the sports club.

Who decide it is safer not to say anything at the village festival.

Who withdraw from social media.

Who give up their political involvement.

Who think carefully about where they can hold hands with their partner.

Who have learned that invisibility is less exhausting and sometimes safer.

No statistic on political violence records the person who decided yesterday that it would be better to stay home.

Nobody counts the pub that was not visited.

The voluntary position that was abandoned.

The club that was left.

The lecture that was never given.

The objection that was swallowed.

The person who stood in front of the wardrobe that morning wondering whether it was really a good idea to wear that T-shirt.

And yet all of these things change a society.

Freedom does not disappear only when the state abolishes it.

It also becomes smaller when people are too afraid to use it.

Fortunately, people do not have to face this alone.

Democracy consists of more than the Bundestag, state parliaments, political parties, courts and elections.

It also happens in places where, astonishingly enough, there is no federal eagle hanging on the wall.

At the sports club.

At the volunteer fire brigade.

In the church community.

In the trade union.

At the cultural association.

In the neighbourhood initiative.

In the youth group.

On the works council.

In the citizens’ initiative.

And sometimes, indeed, in the village pub whose landlord eventually says:

This far and no further.

All of these can form part of the anti-fascist protection wall.

Not by requiring every rabbit breeders’ association to begin with a resolution affirming the free democratic basic order, followed by an introductory course in constitutional law for the treasurer.

But by allowing people to experience this:

I am not alone here.

When one person objects, another objects too.

When someone is threatened, others stand beside them.

When someone tries to take over a club, there are members who say: This is our club too.

When people are excluded because of their origin, religion or sexual orientation, they do not first have to prove that they are strong enough to defend themselves.

Others are there.

Businesses and employers are part of this social space as well. A workplace is not a democracy-free zone. Works councils, trade unions, employees and company management can make it clear that hostility towards other human beings does not become a private matter simply because it happens beyond the factory gates.

A wall protects by separating.

This protective wall protects by connecting.

And the education system can make sure that people learn how to create and defend those connections in the first place.

Democracy education must amount to more than writing “separation of powers” on the board in a civics lesson, making pupils memorise three constitutional institutions and then congratulating ourselves on having successfully democratised the younger generation.

Human rights can be taught.

What matters is learning how to apply them.

Schools can foster civil courage.

They can teach people how to object without becoming aggressors themselves.

How to deal with conflict.

How to recognise the point at which criticism turns into hostility towards human beings.

How propaganda works.

How images and language manipulate.

How to check sources.

How to distinguish a claim from evidence.

How minority rights work and why fundamental rights do not depend on whether the majority happens to find a minority likeable at the time.

Most importantly, children and young people can experience that their own voice matters.

You do not learn democracy only from a book.

You learn it by practising it.

Student councils, participation, discussions, projects and encounters are therefore not decorative extras beside the real business of education.

They are part of it.

So is learning how to endure disagreement without turning the other person into an enemy.

Political education does not end with school either. Adult education centres, universities, youth organisations, clubs, trade unions, churches, foundations and other educational institutions create spaces in which people can develop the ability to act politically.

That is precisely why the demand that teachers remain “neutral” towards right-wing extremism is so interesting.

Teachers must, of course, not use their position to indoctrinate their pupils on behalf of a political party.

That is correct.

It simply does not follow that political education must therefore be indifferent to everything.

Schools are public institutions. Teachers are bound by law and the constitution. Political education must present genuinely controversial issues as controversial and must not overpower pupils. But that does not mean that human dignity, democracy and their abolition are equally legitimate options that teachers are obliged to present with scrupulous balance.

A teacher is not required to remain neutral on whether assault might, after all, constitute an interesting alternative model of social interaction.

A democratic education system would make itself ridiculous if it were required to maintain a posture of exquisite detachment towards its own abolition.

And since public space no longer ends when the village pub locks its doors, the digital sphere belongs in this building too.

The village pub is open twenty-four hours a day now.

Sometimes it is called TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, X or Telegram.

The regulars’ table no longer seats eight people. On a bad day, eighty thousand of them are sitting in the comments section.

Outrage generates attention.

Attention generates reach.

Reach generates money.

It would be almost touching to hope that systems which make money from attention might spontaneously develop a particular fondness for balanced, nuanced and factual debate.

A lie can reach a hundred thousand people before somebody has finished adding the footnotes to the correction.

People can be threatened and intimidated without perpetrator and victim ever having occupied the same room.

Isolated resentment can become community, reinforcement and eventually organisation.

That is why media literacy belongs to democracy education.

People need to learn how to assess sources, recognise manipulation and resist assuming that a claim must be true simply because it has already been shared three thousand times.

But once again, it would be remarkably convenient to dump the entire responsibility on the individual user:

You simply need to become more media literate.

Meanwhile, on the other side, billion-dollar platforms are working in exquisite detail to determine exactly what you are most likely to click on next.

No.

Platform operators also bear responsibility for the spaces they have created. Transparency about recommendation systems, effective action against criminal threats and ways for victims to defend themselves against digital violence are also part of protecting a democratic public sphere.

Exactly what regulation is required is a political debate of its own.

The claim that no regulation is necessary because the internet has always been famous for its remarkable capacity for self-healing may be somewhat harder to defend.

Digital public space is public space.

We should start treating it accordingly.

And in the political sphere, another wall already exists.

The firewall.

It describes the boundary democratic parties draw against cooperation with the far right.

The firewall and the anti-fascist protection wall are not the same thing.

The firewall stands primarily in parliaments and political institutions.

The anti-fascist protection wall also stands in the sports club, the workplace, the school and the village pub.

But the two are connected.

When democratic parties signal that right-wing extremists can, when convenient, make perfectly useful providers of parliamentary majorities or political partners, the effect does not remain inside parliament.

It changes what society regards as normal.

Why should the chair of a local club take a stand if elected representatives are busy explaining that cooperation is not really such a big deal after all?

Democratic parties therefore carry a particular responsibility.

Not because a motion suddenly becomes untouchable merely because right-wing extremists happen to vote for it too.

But because political normalisation begins when opponents of the democratic order become ordinary partners in shaping that order.

A democracy does not have to hand its opponents the wrecking ball and politely ask whether they require any assistance swinging it.

And when democracy is threatened, it cannot simply rely on clubs, schools, trade unions and courageous individuals to sort everything out somehow.

Someone who is threatened needs more than solidarity.

They need the police and the justice system.

Anyone who intimidates local politicians, attacks people because of their origin or threatens political opponents is not merely committing a breach of good manners.

The rule of law must be capable of acting.

That requires adequately staffed police forces, public prosecutors and courts. It requires protection for threatened elected officials, journalists, teachers and volunteers.

And it also requires us not to suddenly treat right-wing extremism as an unfortunate personnel issue when it appears inside state institutions themselves.

A democracy capable of defending itself also possesses instruments that go far beyond disagreement.

Germany’s Basic Law provides, for good reason, for the possibility of banning a political party. It provides for consequences for enemies of the constitutional order in public service. It provides criminal law and institutions for the protection of the constitution.

These instruments are not political divining rods.

Whether their legal requirements are met and when they should be used must be decided according to the rule of law.

Not according to anger.

Not according to opinion polls.

Not according to whether we happen to like a political party.

That is precisely what distinguishes a democracy capable of defending itself from its enemies:

Even when it defends itself, it remains bound by law.

And then there are the AfD voters.

They are staying.

That is the most inconvenient conclusion of this entire construction project.

You cannot deport them.

You should not wall them in.

You cannot take away their right to vote simply because you dislike what they do with it.

And you will not persuade all of them.

You may listen.

You may try to understand.

You may disagree.

You may argue.

You may draw boundaries.

And you may acknowledge another person’s right to hold an opinion while simultaneously considering that opinion completely wrong.

That is not a weakness of democracy.

That is democracy.

But remarkably often, we frame the entire question exclusively from the perspective of those who vote for the far right.

How do we win them back?

How do we reach them?

Why are they angry?

What must we offer them?

What did we neglect?

What must we change?

At this rate, we will be serving coffee and cake next.

These questions are legitimate nonetheless.

They simply stand alongside others that are at least as important:

What do those who are threatened need?

What do those who object need?

What do those who are still here but becoming quieter need?

What does the mayor receiving death threats need?

What does the young woman who no longer dares to hold hands with her girlfriend need?

What does the club chairman need when he refuses to divide his members by origin into the acceptable and the less acceptable?

What does the teacher need when she teaches her pupils about human rights and is suddenly expected to explain why she is not “neutral” about abolishing them?

A democracy must not devote all its attention to the loudest voices and then fail to notice that the quiet ones are leaving the room.

Because the anti-fascist protection wall is not an end in itself.

It is supposed to protect something.

So what?

That two men can hold hands at the village festival.

That a woman wearing a headscarf does not first have to prove that she belongs in the sports club.

That a conservative man and a left-wing student can each consider the other politically completely bonkers and then still work together to set up the fire brigade festival.

That someone can say:

“The government is doing a bloody awful job.”

And the next person can reply:

“I completely disagree.”

And that both can go home afterwards without having to fear one another.

That a mayor can make decisions without receiving death threats for doing so.

That a child learns to ask questions at school.

That a newspaper is free to challenge the government.

That a government can be voted out of office.

That majorities can decide while minorities still retain rights.

And that the loser of an election does not have to fear for their life, liberty or existence.

That is what we are protecting.

Not a perfectly harmonious society.

Not a society without conflict.

Good God, no.

A society that no longer argues would make me deeply suspicious.

Democracy does not promise that we will all like one another.

It promises something far more valuable:

That we can be different without having to eliminate one another because of it.

And there are things we can actually do to protect that.

We can join a club.

We can volunteer.

We can support someone who is being threatened.

We can stand behind a teacher instead of abandoning her to accusations that she has failed to remain neutral.

We can attend a local council meeting.

We can support a works council, trade union or citizens’ initiative.

We can object when people at the regulars’ table suddenly turn individual human beings into “them”.

We can ask:

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

An exceptionally irritating question, incidentally. Especially for slogans that work brilliantly as long as nobody asks what they actually mean.

We can disagree without shouting.

We can listen without agreeing.

We can listen to those affected instead of talking exclusively about those from whom the threat comes.

We can vote.

We can stand for election.

We can attend a demonstration.

We can support political education.

We can teach children that courage does not mean having no fear.

Civil courage often means refusing to step aside despite being afraid.

And nobody has to do all of these things at once.

The anti-fascist protection wall works precisely because not everyone has to carry every brick.

Which brings us back to the house.

Democracy is not a newly purchased flat where one eventually receives the keys, puts one’s feet up and says:

Right.

Finished.

It is a bloody permanent construction site.

It has foundations made of human dignity, fundamental rights and the rule of law.

It has load-bearing walls.

It has open doors.

It has windows through which different opinions can enter.

It has rooms in which people argue.

It has rooms in which people with completely different views live alongside one another.

And of course a house needs exterior walls as well.

Not to wall people in.

Not to separate Neufünfland from the rest of the country.

But so that the house can stand at all.

The anti-fascist protection wall is one of those load-bearing walls.

It does not protect us from other people coming in.

It protects against someone beginning to sort the residents and deny some of them the right to live in the house at all.

That is a considerable difference.

You can complain about the site management.

You can wonder which idiot designed that connection.

You can point out that the heating is broken again.

You can choose a different caretaker.

You can change the house rules.

You can add new rooms.

You can argue about who gets which room and how much the whole business ought to cost.

And, naturally, sooner or later someone will discover that the costs are unfortunately higher than originally estimated.

Welcome to a German construction site.

But none of that is a reason to hand the building over to people whose renovation plan consists of tearing down load-bearing walls, sorting the residents and then announcing that at last there is order in the house again.

All right, then.

The cement mixer can keep running.

We have plenty to build.

Including the Anti-Fascist Protection Wall.

This time, though, we will build it where it belongs:

as a load-bearing part of the house of democracy.

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