I was appalled by the findings of the Correctiv investigation. I couldn’t help but hear echoes of the Nazi “Final Solution” in the totalizing rhetoric of Martin Sellner’s “masterplan,” and the proposal to deport presumably non-white Germans en masse recalls Nazi concentration camps. “Non-assimilated” German citizens seemed to be a euphemism for “non-white” citizens, and the notion of deporting legal citizens is particularly disturbing; it creates a hierarchy of citizenship, extending civil rights only to some and evoking systems of racial apartheid. The clandestine nature of the AfD event further supports how the party is attempting to subvert democracy – the exposure of their manipulative techniques, such as using influencers, propaganda, and cynically sowing doubt about the viability of political processes, might decrease their credibility. I wondered what effect the Correctiv investigation had, if any AfD supporters tempered their views or became skeptical of the party, if their enthusiasm about its extreme platform only increased, or if they are already disinclined to trust journalism. Does political polarization in Germany operate similarly to the U.S., in which many people only consume news that reinforces their preexisting beliefs? Does this curb the influence of groundbreaking investigations like Correctiv’s?
I was also shocked by the CDU and Friedrich Merz’s willingness to collaborate with the AfD, even after the revelations of the Correctiv investigation and the party’s inflammatory statements and proposals. The 2025 collaboration on the hardline anti-immigration bill was unprecedented, representing the first occasion since World War II that a piece of legislation passed the Bundestag with the support of right-wing extremists. Although it’s an imperfect analogy, the CDU’s willingness to work with the AfD reminded me once again of how the Weimar Republic enabled the rise of Hitler and refused to ban the Nazi Party, because conservative elites mistakenly believed that they could control the demagogue. How are Germans grappling with the historical parallels between their country’s Nazi past and the current resurgence of the far right? Could the AfD be banned on the grounds of its private statements, or only what it espouses publicly? What do we make of the disparity between its private and public platforms? Would banning the party effectively limit its political power, or would that backfire, turning its leaders into martyrs?
I was also fascinated by what this week’s readings reveal about German free speech policy. The concept of a court litigating the credibility of a journalistic piece is so alien to me as an American, and seems like it could create avenues for the government to undemocratically prescribe what people read. Shouldn’t the public determine for themselves what news they trust? Then again, Americans are notoriously bad at doing that – the rise of the far right in the U.S. could be at least partially attributed to outlets like Fox News. I wondered how exactly the Berlin court made its determination about the Correctiv piece, especially as the Reuters piece established the validity and rigor of the investigative team’s methods. It’s true that there was a lot of opinionated language in the Correctiv piece, but that doesn’t detract from the impact of its conclusions. I wondered if the writers should have assumed a more neutral tone, letting the damning findings speak for themselves, in order to defuse potential allegations of political bias, or if this would verge on sane-washing a horrifying political development.
