Month: October 2026 (Page 2 of 7)

I’ve been waiting for someone to call out Nigel Farage for being, quite frankly, an idiot. Since studying in the US, I have had a much better grasp of American politics than of my own country’s (British politics). I actually learned more about Reform UK through social media, which pairs perfectly with Ayala Panievsky’s chapter on how social media and journalism are a perfect way for populist parties to launch their popularity. However, the reels that came up on my feed were anti-reform, parody videos where people acted out what people who voted for reform are like. Every single one of them blatantly mocked a potential lack of education. I found this chapter incredibly interesting after the interview I conducted with the German Professor Barbara Nagel for my analysis piece. She talked about how populist parties thrive on creating irrational arguments because it’s so much more fun and so much easier. You can quite literally bend anything, in fact, to work in your favour, and because the argument is basic and simplistic, uneducated people should follow. When Panievsky brought up Emily Maitlis’ interview, this directly reminded me of what Professor Nagel had told me. Dr Gorka had so much fun destroying the BBC on live television, even if he didn’t believe what he was saying himself.

Additionally, I actually had no idea that Farage had been on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, and to gain traction for all the wrong reasons. It’s such an unserious show; it’s meant to be for celebrity actors, comedians or television personalities, so the fact that Farage, a politician, was on there is laughable. I actually remember when Boris Johnson’s father, Stanley Johnson, I believe, went on the show; he was made a laughingstock, and then a few years later, we were stuck with “Bojo” leading us through the pandemic.

Another part of the reading which I found myself underlining was the AfD being declared by the German domestic intelligence agency as right-wing extremist and an anti-constitutional organisation “which has Nazi roots,” (81) and that the DJV “suggested that media outlets should use clear warning labels in all their articles about the AfD, similar to health risk warnings on cigarette packets.” (81) This reminded me of the times when Trump was banned from social media for posting heinous things, and how he is a convicted felon, and how is he also the president of the United States. Panievsky reflects a similar sentiment in her interview with the journalist, who asks, “How can this person be our prime minister?” (87) when referring to Netanyahu. But she ends up being just as bad as everybody else by reposting his replies. So it is a constant cycle that is being fed, like CBS claimed to have raked in the money when Trump voiced his heinous views on their platform. Then she goes on to talk about journalists who take a centre view, so they are not anti-MAGA in the public view. But surely that undermines everything they stand for in the industry? Integrity is so important; they can’t let that go just because they think their views might slip. Again, Panievsky later talks about strategic bias and how “journalists knowingly slant the news to favour one candidate, party or political camp regardless of their personal beliefs” (102). It’s the “regardless of their personal beliefs” that stumps me. Why do they choose to do that?

Panievsky really gets us thinking about certain aspects of journalism, politics, and mainstream media in a way I wouldn’t without prompting. I wonder what journalists thought of this book, since she blatantly calls them out for their lack of integrity in the field.

While reading The  New Censorship, I kept thinking about the presidential election held earlier this year in my own country. Abelardo de la Espriella, flamboyantly far-right, dressed in the fashion of Nayib Bukele, an avid Trump supporter and former lawyer for right-wing paramilitaries, was elected Colombia’s president.

In the months leading up to the vote, Colombian media attacked, fact-checked or praised him. Even from thousands of kilometres away, my FYP could not escape him. One morning, scrolling mindlessly through Instagram, I came across a reel by his youth coalition.  The person speaking was my former classmate. I kept digging, and sure enough, most of my classmates, many of whom were close friends, had liked it, reposted it or shared it to their stories. I was appalled.

I spent the day calling and texting them, getting a sense of “why?” More often than not, the answer was some version of: “I am not right-leaning; I’m just tired of the left. I am a centrist, but the centre candidate is not popular enough to win”.

And so Panievsky’s “deceptive appeal of the middle-ground” resonates deeply with this experience. De la Espriella was not originally leading the polls, but as the campaign progressed, media outlets began portraying him as one side of a symmetrical contest— that he was an equally opposing side to the old establishment. So much so that he became the only alternative in my classmate’s view.

What happened to my classmates isn’t just a Colombian anomaly. Reading about the AfD, I wonder if, for young voters in Germany, a skewed perception of the AfD’s rising popularity might swing undecided voters to the right.  Political scientist Gefjon Off characterises young voters as having “looser affiliation to any particular party”, which is why platforming extremists as “surging” alternatives is so dangerous.

A recent DW report on AfD influencer tactics  opens with the question: “To what extent are young people being politicized by the right? Or are they simply disillusioned with the established parties?” I think the word disillusionment carries a risk of normalising extremism just because it is “out of the norm”. It creates a false perception that just by being outsiders, they are a viable alternative to the mainstream. My classmates’ answers echos that framing. None of them told me they were choosing the far-right, “dissilussion” made sense to them as a neutral standing point that saw itself materialized in an outsider like De la Espriella.

The numbers show a divided picture. In Berlin, Left Party voters skew young: 43% of 16-24-year-olds voted for the party, and only 12% opted for the AfD. Yet a POLITICO article titled “The Far Right Is Winning. These Young Germans Show Us Why,” documents rising extremist views in the Eastern-German youth. For example, growing affiliation with Young Nationalists, the youth wing of “The Homeland,” and, perhaps most striking, 41% of 18- to 24-year-old voters backed the AfD in the infamous Saxony-Anhalt September election.

This gap shows that young voters are not destined to shift right. But it also warns us that an extreme opinion could become ordinary if the media chooses to treat it as such. Outlets risk painting outsiders as an alternative, young electorate who see themselves in the middle may start to view them as such.

Berlin’s Russian and Palestinian communities reveal something migration statistics cannot capture: people can live in the same city while inhabiting radically different relationships to the past and future. For some Russians who left after February 2022, exile may represent a rupture with a country they hope will one day become recognizable to them again. For Palestinians whose families have experienced displacement across Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, separation from home may extend across generations, shaped by political circumstances no individual decision to migrate can resolve. There different migration histories raise the question of how does the possibility—or impossibility—of return shape life in exile?

For Russian journalists who fled the Kremlin’s repression, Berlin can become more than a place of refuge. It can provide the institutional and professional space to continue reporting on a country they have physically left but have not stopped trying to understand. Publications such as Meduza and TV Rain illustrate how journalism continues to cross borders even when at the onslaught of governments potentially targeting these individuals. Exile does not necessarily end political participation; it can transform its methods. A newsroom outside Russia can still contest the Kremlin’s account of Russian society, even as its journalists confront the consequences of losing access to the country they cover.

For Palestinians, the relationship between displacement and political identity follows a different, equally complex trajectory. Families may be distributed across Berlin, Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, with separation sustained by war, borders, legal status, and unequal freedom of movement. Home is not necessarily a place someone can choose to revisit when circumstances improve. It may also be a family history transmitted through stories, relationships, and memories to people born far from the places their relatives left. The present conflict can reopen older experiences of displacement without making every Palestinian’s experience identical.

These differences come about when public narratives often compress prolonged histories into immediate events. Russian newcomers can become shorthand for opposition to Putin; Palestinians can become shorthand for demonstrations over Gaza. Both framings risk obscuring the ordinary, less visible work of maintaining a community across borders: reporting, preserving language, and trying to establish a future without abandoning the past.

The chapters on strategic media bias and the mainstreaming of the far right provide a helpful perspective. The question is not simply whether coverage is factually accurate, but also what disappears when a complex population is reduced to the issue dominating the headlines. A journalist’s professional exile, a family’s decades-long separation, and a young person’s struggle with inherited identity are different stories, even when they unfold in the same city.

Berlin, then, is not simply a destination where migrants build new lives. It is a place where unfinished histories remain active. Some people may understand exile as a temporary condition; others may inherit it as part of their family’s experience. For still others, belonging to a new country need not mean abandoning the old one.

Perhaps the hardest part of migration is not leaving home, but learning to imagine a future when the meaning—and the possibility—of home remains unsettled.

The German far-right political party Alternative for Germany made history last month when it won the election in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. Though the party, known by its German initials AfD, fell just short of an absolute majority, it may still be able to implement parts of its anti-immigration platform. 

Among the tools the party hopes to use? Artificial intelligence.

The manifesto released earlier this year by the Saxony-Anhalt association of the AfD proposes the development of a state-level strategy for “technological upgrading, digitalization, and AI.” This plan, which appears under the heading “Immigration and Remigration,” also includes a funding program to encourage small businesses to utilize more technology.

The end goal, the document notes, is to “prevent the immigration of skilled workers from culturally alien backgrounds.”

“What I took from this is that they just really want to emphasize that they don’t want any kind of immigration, even skilled migration,” said April Reber, a postdoctoral researcher at Marburg University who specializes in the history of the AfD. 

Experts, however, are skeptical that such a policy would work.

“I don’t think that’s really realistic,” said Jonathan Olsen, a professor of political science at Texas Woman’s University who has extensively studied the AfD’s political strategies. “Germany has a declining birth rate, right? So there are going to be fewer Germans to go around to fill these positions, and then we’re looking at things like paying into the pension system. Germany needs skilled labor.” 

A recent study from the Berlin Institute for Population and Development found that Germany’s working-age population is projected to decrease by 4.7% by 2045, as first reported by DW. 

Yvonne Giesing, an economics lecturer at The University of Western Australia Business School who has studied the impact of automation and AI on German immigration, said that the Saxony-Anhalt AfD’s AI policy is “more like their dream and not what is actually realistic.”

In fact, Giesing noted, such a policy of embracing AI may actually backfire and harm native-born workers disproportionately, since many migrants are employed in fields that require manual labor and may not be easily replaced by AI. 

According to The Federal Statistical Office of Germany, the five largest occupational groups among employed first-generation immigrants (accounting for 35% of employment) are transport and logistics; medical and healthcare; cleaning; business management and organization; and sales. 

In some instances, AI may even help migrants — both unskilled and skilled — navigate traditional obstacles in employment more easily, further countering the AfD’s goals.

“Another thing I think is really interesting with AI at the moment is that it really reduces any kind of language barrier,” said Giesing. “In the past — I’m now thinking like 10, 20 years ago — one big problem of migrants in the labor market would be the language issue. But I think with AI, I really see that this area is breaking down.”

The AfD is not the first to propose technologization as a way to reduce immigration. In 2024, the Tory politician Chris Philp suggested that British businesses should use more robots instead of migrants. Earlier this year, Team Mirai, a tech-centered political party in Japan founded by software engineers, said that the increased use of AI could result in fewer foreign workers. 

Reber also cautioned that the manifesto may also not be a true representation of the policies that voters care about, given the length and exhausting process of making such a document.

“They vote on each issue. And it’s very, it takes a really long time. And usually people are just done, and there are side conversations going on, and sometimes they’ll just be like, ‘yes, we support this,’ and they won’t even really spend a lot of time on each statement.” 


Yet the Saxony-Anhalt AfD’s stance on AI can also be understood as one of many ways the party is trying to wield limited state powers. The core issue of the party, immigration, is one that is legislated at the federal level, an arena where the AfD does not yet have control. However, states in Germany reserve significant powers like education, healthcare, and cultural policy. 

Olsen argued that the Saxony-Anhalt association of the AfD could add AI policy to its better-known tools to make life more difficult for migrants.

“There’s really not much they can do,” said Olsen, referring to the AfD’s limited ability to influence national immigration policy. “What they can do is try to make things as uncomfortable as possible for migrants in these states.”

Still, the overall impact of AI on labor, especially skilled labor, is largely unclear. Siddhi Pal, who researches AI policy at interface, a Berlin-based think tank specializing in tech policy, noted that AI’s effects have yet to be demonstrated in many occupations. 

“I also think that AI is reaching the workforce in phases. We first saw software engineers, for example, being heavily impacted,” Pal said. “AI is not at a stage where we see it across the labor market everywhere in practice.”

But before even getting to executing an AI policy, the AFD may first need to sell its constituents on it: Some members of the party are completely unaware that their politicians are making the connection between AI and migration.

“I even messaged a few AFD members
I know who are in different states, and they had no idea,” Reber said. “They were like, ‘What are you talking about? AI has nothing to do with migration.’”

Russia has changed its attacks on Ukraine from nighttime to round-the-clock bombardment. 

On September 4, the Associated Press reported that Russian drone and missile attacks, which for much of the war came mainly at night, have begun to also occur during the day—severely disrupting the rhythm of daily life. As Samya Kullab of the Associated Press writes, “[the air raids have] interrupted commutes, shopping trips and children’s school, intruded on life’s biggest moments.”

Many in the capital are considering leaving Kyiv, including Veronika’s extended family. She’s a Princeton alumna from Kyiv, who asked to be identified only by her first name because her relatives remain in the capital. Her extended family have now set a deadline for their departure. In the recent weeks, as Russian daytime strikes began, many families around them have already left, according to Veronika.

“They have decided to leave before, but this is the time they sound the most earnest to leave,” Veronika said. When asked where they might go, Veronika said her extended family has not decided. Leaving behind their established jobs as nurses and the lives they built remains the biggest hurdle for her family, who have endured more than four years of conflict. They plan to depart within the month, weighing a move to Spain or joining her family in the United States.

About 4.41 million people had returned to their places of residence after being displaced by the war as of December 2025, including about 1.1 million who returned from abroad, according to the International Organization for Migration. The IOM also reported that nearly 4 million people remained internally displaced within Ukraine.

For Ukrainians who remain in or returned to the country, the day-time attacks come as another winter approaches. “Combined with the cold winter around the corner, it no longer makes sense to stay. Finding basic needs like water will be an issue once more,” Veronika notes.

Ekaterina Pravilova, Professor of History at Princeton University whose research focuses on the Russian Empire and its prior satellite states including Ukraine, said the winter is particularly difficult because Russia’s targeted attacks on infrastructure leave residents without electricity and heating. She hears from people in Kyiv describe needing to repeatedly respond to air-raid alerts, “So it’s like constantly, all day, drones and missile attacks.” 

Yet, many Ukrainians have adapted to the conditions, she said, including by buying generators and changing their routines around power outages and air raids. “The resilience of the population is just remarkable,” Pravilova added.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that 5.9 million Ukrainians were refugees abroad at the end of 2025. UNHCR further emphasized that persistent airstrikes, damaged housing, and attacks on essential infrastructure continue to hinder sustainable returns to Ukraine by refugees.

For Veronika’s relatives, these challenges are weighed against fleeing. “My relatives plan to flee, but it is so hard for them to leave [their country] and their livelihoods, that is why they have stayed so long,” Veronika said.

As Russia extends its drone and missile campaign into daylight, the distinction between wartime danger and ordinary life is disappearing. With winter approaching, the intensifying bombardment raises a larger question: can pressure on Ukraine’s civilian population trigger another wave of displacement?

Veronika’s extended family in Kyiv has set a deadline to leave Ukraine. For months, they had discussed departing. Now, as Russian drone and missile attacks arrive during the day as well as at night, they are preparing to act.

“They have decided to leave before, but this is the time they sound the most earnest to leave,” said Veronika, a Princeton alumna from Kyiv who asked to be identified only by her first name because her relatives remain in the capital. Her family has not decided where to go. Spain and the United States are possibilities, but leaving would mean abandoning established jobs as nurses and the lives they have built at home. After more than four years of war, their dilemma is no longer simply whether they can endure another attack. It is whether the conditions for an ordinary life will survive another winter of protracted conflict.

When daylight no longer means safety

For much of the war, residents of Kyiv learned to organize their lives around nighttime bombardment. Air-raid alerts and monitoring channels helped them decide when to seek shelter, while daylight offered an imperfect opportunity to work, attend school, shop and see family. As Samya Kullab of the Associated Press writes, “[the air raids have] interrupted commutes, shopping trips and children’s school, intruded on life’s biggest moments.”

Kateryna Hodunova, a reporter with The Kyiv Independent, emphasized that the escalation is not only about frequency but also about scale: the number of drones and missiles Russia launches. Hodunova outlined three possible, overlapping explanations. First, Russia appears to be testing new tactics, according to Yuriy Ihnat, head of the Ukrainian Air Force’s Communications Department, although its precise objectives remain unclear. Second, successive waves of attacks can overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses, leaving little time to recover from overnight barrages before the next wave arrives. Third, the attacks may serve a psychological purpose. Ukrainian military analyst Victor Kevlyuk, Hodunova said, believes Russia is trying to keep civilians in a constant state of fear, never knowing when the next attack might come.

Furthermore, the AP and Reuters have reported on Russia’s increasing use of fast-flying, jet-powered drones, which are more difficult to intercept than older propeller-driven models. The precise balance between experimentation, military pressure and psychological warfare remains uncertain. But the consequences for civilians are increasingly visible.

The cumulative cost of ordinary life

Repeated attacks transform even routine errands into uncertain undertakings. Reuters documented interrupted metro services, crowded roads, disrupted supply chains and schoolchildren moving into underground shelters after classes had begun. Supermarket visits and commutes can be cut short by warnings, while damage to infrastructure adds further obstacles.

The harm extends beyond immediate physical danger. When residents cannot reliably predict whether they will reach work, complete a school day or return home without interruption, planning becomes difficult. Education becomes less stable, work less predictable and family responsibilities harder to manage. The constant need to monitor alerts and prepare for another attack also leaves little time to rest.

This pattern fits a broader campaign against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. A July analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that Russia’s long-range strikes increasingly impose cumulative costs on Ukraine’s ability to fight, repair damage, govern and negotiate. Attacks on energy systems, transport and urban infrastructure can weaken a country without requiring territorial conquest alone.

Phillips P. O’Brien, a military historian at the University of St Andrews argues that Russia’s strategy was increasingly aimed at making Ukrainian cities “unliveable,” provoking another refugee crisis and pressuring Kyiv toward a settlement favorable to Moscow.

Winter raises the stakes

The approaching winter could intensify those pressures. Attacks on electricity generation and distribution, heating systems and other essential infrastructure can make neighborhoods difficult to inhabit even when residential buildings remain standing.

Ekaterina Pravilova, a Princeton University history professor whose research focuses on the Russian Empire and territories under its former influence, including Ukraine, said winter is especially difficult because infrastructure strikes can deprive residents of electricity and heating.

People she hears from in Kyiv describe responding repeatedly to air-raid alerts. “So it’s like constantly, all day, drones and missile attacks,” she said.

Pravilova also emphasized Ukrainians’ capacity to adapt, including buying generators and adjusting routines around power outages and air raids. “The resilience of the population is just remarkable,” she said.

For Veronika’s relatives, the prospect of another winter has become central to their decision. Their livelihoods remain a powerful reason to stay, but the possibility of renewed shortages makes remaining increasingly difficult to justify.

Could another refugee wave follow?

A new wave of displacement is a credible risk, although the attacks alone cannot establish how many people will leave.

The scale of existing displacement underscores the stakes. The International Organization for Migration’s July 2026 tracking data estimated that approximately 4 million people remained internally displaced within Ukraine. UNHCR reported that 5.86 million refugees from Ukraine were recorded globally by December 2025. These figures describe an ongoing displacement crisis, not a forecast of how many additional people will flee.

Some Ukrainians will remain despite worsening conditions because of employment, family responsibilities, attachment to home or a lack of viable alternatives. Others may move to safer parts of Ukraine before considering crossing an international border. The decision also depends on accommodation, financial resources and the availability of relatives or support networks elsewhere.

Veronika’s family illustrates the tension between the desire to remain and the growing difficulty of doing so. They have not chosen a destination, and leaving would mean giving up established professions and a familiar community. To determine whether this pressure is becoming a new refugee wave, displacement tracking, border-crossing data, and surveys of residents’ intentions will be essential. 

For Veronika’s relatives, that breaking point may arrive before winter. “My relatives plan to flee, but it is so hard for them to leave [their country] and their livelihoods, that is why they have stayed so long,” she said.

The ultimate measure of Russia’s bombardment will not be limited to the buildings damaged. It will also be the number of Ukrainians who conclude that staying has become untenable—and who leave because they can no longer secure the conditions for an ordinary life.

On Oct. 6, Tobias Rausch of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was elected president of Saxony-Anhalt’s state parliament, the first time a member of the party has led a German state legislature. He received 48 votes in a secret ballot, four more than the AfD and the populist Alliance for Social Justice and Economic Reason (BSW) hold together.

Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil of the Social Democrats called the vote a Tabubruch, or “taboo breach.” Sven Schulze, the state’s minister-president and a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), rejected suggestions that the extra votes came from his party. The AfD’s lead candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, plans to run for Schulze’s office in December.

The vote comes as Germany’s governing parties have adopted increasingly stringent migration measures, turning back asylum seekers at the border, suspending family reunification for some refugees, and lengthening the path to citizenship. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has argued that acting on migration will help counter the far right’s growing appeal. The AfD’s support has risen anyway. The party won 20.8% of the vote in the February 2025 federal election and now averages about 28% in national polls, roughly eight points ahead of Merz’s CDU.

For the roughly 1.3 million Ukrainians living in Germany, the policy shift has already arrived. In November 2025, the federal cabinet approved a bill to move Ukrainians who arrived after April 1, 2025, from Bürgergeld (Citizen’s Allowance, Germany’s standard welfare benefit) to the lower payments given to asylum seekers. In April, a Unity Hub opened in Berlin, funded by Germany and operated by Ukraine, that offers services to Ukrainians and is partly intended to encourage returns. Merz called the return of fighting-age men “essential to ensure Ukraine’s ability to defend itself, its social cohesion and reconstruction.” And in July, the European Union stopped automatically granting protection to newly arriving Ukrainian men who have not met their military obligations.

Anastasiia Yakovlieva, 25, who has lived in Germany since fleeing the war in Ukraine in 2022, said the dean of her Ukrainian university had attended a conference in Berlin where officials were “already organizing special centers for reintegration of Ukrainians back to Ukraine.”

Yakovlieva said that Germany seems to be “working in both directions.” The country has also made it easier for Ukrainians to stay, she said, including by renewing their protection each year, allowing them to exchange Ukrainian driver’s licenses, simplifying recognition of Ukrainian degrees, and offering German classes.

Jan-Werner Müller, a political theorist and professor of politics at Princeton University, said that the AfD has come to “own” migration as an issue. Other German parties, he said, helped by making migration a central topic of debate, which lent legitimacy to far-right framings. The AfD’s perceived competence on migration, he said, has spilled over into other areas such as the economy.

Müller said the federal government has largely addressed the AfD’s complaints about migration, yet the party continues to grow partly because it serves as a vessel for broader discontent. As its name suggests, he said, it provides voters an “alternative” – one that can channel general grievances into anti-migration sentiment.

“No far-right populist has ever run out of scapegoats,” Müller said.

The AfD has directed some of that rhetoric at Ukrainians. Siegmund said during the Saxony-Anhalt campaign that “remigration,” a term the AfD uses for mass deportation, should apply to anyone who does not contribute to society, and included Ukrainian refugees without jobs. The AfD’s Saxony-Anhalt platform called for ending war-refugee status for Ukrainians.

Müller said the AfD often frames such proposals through “ethnopluralism,” the idea that different ethnic and cultural groups should live in their own distinct regions rather than in multicultural societies. The framing, he said, allows the party to present deportation as being in migrants’ own interest.

Ukraine has also featured in right-wing populist campaigns elsewhere in Europe. In Hungary, former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán routinely attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his reelection campaign before losing April’s election, ending 16 years in power. Sofiia Patkanovtsiy, a Princeton University sophomore from Uzhhorod, a Ukrainian city near the Hungarian border, said “our country and our people were definitely a big thing in the agendas during the [Hungarian] election.”

Employment data complicate the far-right claim that Ukrainian refugees do not contribute, though the data show a gap. Nearly 40% of Ukrainian nationals in Germany were employed in June 2026, with the number growing consistently. Researchers have cited language barriers, a lack of childcare and slow recognition of foreign qualifications.

Yakovlieva said she has seen those barriers firsthand. Her mother, who holds a finance degree from a Ukrainian university, completed a months-long training course recommended by a German job center but was turned down for a kindergarten assistant job because she lacked the required degree.

“Ukrainians are people that are really willing to learn and to practice what they used to practice in Ukraine, just to have their jobs back,” Yakovlieva said. “Sometimes it is just frustrating for people who get refused to even get to an interview.” A 2025 survey by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) found that 94% of Ukrainian refugees in Germany who were not employed said they wanted to work.

Yakovlieva noted that Germany may have a longer-term incentive to keep refugees in the country. “Germany is getting older,” she said. “They need the labor power here.” The German workforce is projected to decrease by 4.7% in the next two decades.

Ukrainians are not the only group facing the shift. Germany has resumed deportations to Syria and Afghanistan, and the federal migration office has revoked protection from a growing share of Syrians whose cases it reviews.

Whether Germany’s stricter approach will slow the AfD remains uncertain. Siegmund needs 42 votes to become minister-president in Saxony-Anhalt; the AfD holds 39 of the state parliament’s 83 seats.

For Yakovlieva, the policy debate does not change what she would need to return to Ukraine: an improvement in “the security situation.”

“Even if the war ends, there is going to be a couple years where the situation in Ukraine is going to be really tough,” she said, “because of the mental health crisis, the financial crisis in Ukraine, and the whole rebuilding process.”

Though I appreciate Panievsky’s commitment to holding journalists accountable for the rise of the far-right, I feel she gives the danger of social media short shrift. She writes, “Journalists and newsrooms cannot cry ‘press freedom!’ and pride themselves on being essential for democracy, but blame it on TikTok whenever democracy goes rogue.” She also cites what social scientists call the “trust gap,” a phenomenon which describes the public’s belief in institutional/mainstream journalism being greater than news sourced from social media platforms. To be sure, journalists are certainly responsible, at least in part, for accelerating the far-right’s ascendancy. (Donald Trump, for example, has particularly benefited from the ceaseless mainstream news coverage). But most Americans do not have New York Times subscriptions, nor do they regularly watch CNN or NBC on network television. As of 2025, social media became the main source of news for most Americans. Even if the public is less willing to trust headlines on Meta, they are most definitely seeing them and internalizing them, even subconsciously. These platforms, I believe, are primarily to blame for the popularity of the far-right.

Part of the danger with social media is that it situates its users in echo chambers, where there may be a normalizing effect on extremist ideas. Panievsky writes about this phenomenon in the context of Trump’s election. His victory seemingly gave individuals the license to express xenophobic views which had previously been espoused privately. As Panievsky recounts: “After being shown data suggesting that Trump’s election was certain in their state, Americans were more likely to donate to anti-immigration causes. Even individuals who were less likely to agree with xenophobic behaviour sanctioned it less when they learned that it was more popular in their community than they expected.” The perceived reduction in stigma led to an uptick in vocalizing extremist ideas. This pattern is of course amplified on social media, where one’s feed consists almost entirely of ideological sycophants. It is no wonder, then, that these platforms can become breeding grounds for extremism. 

Finally, I’m interested in the question of newsworthiness in the Trump era / Age of Distraction. Just over a decade ago, President Obama’s choice to wear a tan suit at a press conference constituted the biggest White House scandal of his tenure. Today, scandals of much greater magnitude – calling a female journalist “miss piggy”, falsely claiming that Haitian migrants eat their pets – are reported as mere headlines and disappear from the news cycle in a remarkably speedy fashion. What happens when these scandals/controversies occur so frequently that we hardly pause to recognize their danger? This, too, creates a normalizing effect which helps contribute to the destigmatization of extremist ideas.

I was particularly struck by the paradox Panievsky illustrates of how the rightwing populists actually love the media that they excoriate, because it provides them with a platform. I wondered if this creates a feedback loop, where rightwing allegations of leftwing media bias push mainstream outlets to increasingly marginalize leftwing voices and highlight rightwing ones. If rightwing politicians are seeking the media out and even expressing their affection for it behind the scenes, then their attacks are clearly spurious; why doesn’t the media ever report on this contradiction? 

Panievsky lucidly illustrates how the media has desensitized the public to the radicalism of politicians like Nigel Farage and Itamar Ben-Gvir by consistently elevating their positions. I was fascinated by the study that showed that Americans were more likely to donate to anti-immigration causes after seeing data indicating that Trump would win their state. This demonstrates that people are more comfortable espousing extreme views once extremism is normalized, and the media is a key arbiter of social acceptability. It is remarkable that many journalists are so cowed by potential allegations of bias – even when their audience is also ideologically siloed – that they facilitate the spread of hateful views. It is ironic to me that as the mainstream media continues to veer to the right, they increasingly lose the trust of conservative audiences, demonstrating the disconnect between the media atmosphere and reality. Panievsky’s point about how journalists can enable the rise of the far right is particularly notable amongst frenzied discourse about how social media foments extremism: social media just provides an audience, but mainstream news coverage confers credibility, deserved or not. 

Panievsky’s analysis of strategic bias and “objectivity” as a metric for journalistic quality was also interesting. The prevalence of strategic bias in coverage of demagogues like Trump and Netanyahu reveals that the compulsion to give equal weight to both sides isn’t even objective, as it can disproportionately amplify less popular or patently false views. Neutrality doesn’t equate to truthfulness, and the failure to debunk false claims can expand their influence. (We see this most clearly in Panievsky’s striking example of how journalists dispassionately report right wing attacks on the media itself without defending themselves. Paradoxically, journalists are platforming only one side of the “debate” about the legitimacy of the media, and thus risk framing their opponents’ cynical position as fact.) The compulsion to balance suggests that the mere act of reporting the truth is ideological, which amounts to acquiescence to the rightwing characterization of reporting as political persecution. I was curious as to whether, by pushing the demarcation of acceptable views further and further right, and perhaps abetting the populist resurgence across the developed world, the vilified “liberal media” is actually encouraging rightwing politicians to adopt progressively more extreme positions by mitigating the social consequences for doing so.

On Tuesday, September 29, the Supreme Court temporarily ruled that the Trump administration can deport immigrants to third-countries, or a country other than the one they consider their homeland. This ruling comes as an extension of a continued string of court cases targeting the due process protections for immigrants and asylum seekers in the United States. 

Previously this year, the Trump administration won an appeal in a federal court that re-granted them the right to expeditiously deport migrants throughout the nation, not only along the southern border. In the Justice Department’s court filing for the case, they described this mechanism of speedy deportations, which can bypass due process protections, as an “essential tool to combat the unprecedented surge of illegal immigration over the past few years” and to deport their aimed goal of millions of migrants. This new Supreme Court ruling, allowing for third country deportations including to unsafe nations, comes as an expansion of these attacks on due process protections for migrants within the United States.

Deborah Pearlstein, Director of Princeton University’s Program in Law and Public Policy explains in a written statement that “detainees have made a powerful case that their process rights are being violated.” She expands that “the Court’s approach effectively allows the policy [of third country deportations] to continue longer” and “to affect a greater number of people.” She maintains that even if the Court ultimately reverses its temporary decision, it will be “practically extremely difficult for any of those deported under it ever to find a meaningful remedy.” Pearlstein elaborates that the interim ruling by the court on third country deportations, as on “birthright citizenship, the destruction of government agencies, and more…effectively allow even blatantly illegal executive actions to continue indefinitely, causing some harms (like this one) often very hard to correct after the fact.”

Pearlstein’s points are echoed by Douglas S. Massey, an Emeritus professor of Sociology at Princeton University, who holds that third country deportations have crossed the line into an unconstitutional mass relocation program, now temporarily allowed for by the Court. In a written statement, he shared how “the Trump administration’s immigration, detention, and removal policies are unethical, immoral, and unconstitutional.” 

Throughout Trump’s campaign, he shared in rallies his intention to “begin the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” As means to accomplish this goal, the administration has resorted to means of removing migrants, bypassing their due process, changing the legal system through executive orders, and deporting migrants to nations they may not consider their homeland or to nations they may have never been to. 

Massey associates the third country deportation policy as reflecting Trump’s “desire to accumulate and exercise power.” He references “the current deportation regime” which”plays favorably with his racist base…who hate immigrants and resent their presence” in the country.

An American pro se legal coach, Amelia, who preferred to only be identified by her first name for the protection of those she supports in the system, works to help those who can’t afford lawyers to understand the constantly shifting legal grapevine of immigration cases. 

“In immigration court, you are not appointed a lawyer. You have to find one,” Amelia explains. She is severely concerned by the third country deportation policy on the grounds that many of her clients do not have access to proper technology, are not literate, and do not understand the legal structures changing around them. She describes a “cycle of deportation” that migrants face within the American system: “people get deported, and they have to leave [where they are deported to] against as they originally left because they feared something in their home country.” She details how some of the migrants she supports have been deported multiple times. 

Another pro se legal coach at Amelia’s clinic who preferred to speak anonymously shared that, “by adding this third country option for deportation, when talking about people getting removed to third countries, the United States government is not stupid. They are trying to make it impossible for these people to return.” She describes the policy as a “fear tactic. If you are scared of being tortured or dying, and you hear by entering the U.S. that you could be sent to be tortured or die somewhere else, now you are faced with an impossible situation of what you can do.”

Another concern as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision two weeks ago is potential violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT), one of the hallmarks of the United Nation’s human rights work. Some of the nations the Trump administration is deporting migrants to are widely considered unsafe, torturous, are in active conflict zones, or are unsanitary prison facilities. Deportation to these nations, especially of third country deportees, may cross the line into violating the UNCAT, despite potential diplomatic assurances that deportees will not be subjugated to torture. However, as Massey states, “diplomatic assurances have no legal and standing and little moral weight…but for the Trump administration, that is the point.” There have already been reports of sexual violence, torture, and solitary towards asylum seekers deported under the third country deportation program.