Berlin’s immigration authorities are moving to deport four young foreign residents on allegations related to participation in protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, an unprecedented move that raises serious concerns over civil liberties in Germany.
The deportation orders, issued under German migration law, were made amid political pressure and over internal objections from the head of the state of Berlin’s immigration agency.
The internal strife arose because three of those targeted for deportation are citizens of European Union member states who normally enjoy freedom of movement between E.U. countries. None of the four has been convicted of any crimes.
“What we’re seeing here is straight out of the far right’s playbook,” said Alexander Gorski, a lawyer representing two of the protesters. “You can see it in the U.S. and Germany, too: Political dissent is silenced by targeting the migration status of protesters.”
If they really want to deport foreigners they should start with the old-fashioned antisemites that mingle in those protests.
that is part of their supposed reasoning. the four are accused of chanting antisemitic things, but they dont tell u what has allegedly been chanted.
either way, deporting EU citizens who havent been committed of any crimes is very legally dubious.
deportations in general if u ask me, are morally dubious.
It’s not hard to make a guess given the context
we can guess, yes. but the fact that the claim has not been backed by any criminal proceedings, and they dont even want to say what exactly theyre accused of chanting, is a ridiculous basis for deportation if u ask me.
TBF: as the article states, under German law it is not. Whether that is a good idea can surely be debated, but it is legal.
I seem to remember that most of the actions of the Nazis once they got into power were also legal.
Maybe, just maybe, people should have a standard of right and wrong which does not delegate that definition to “legality”, especially people in Germany.
Why Germany especially? So far, every state of injustice declared legal whatever they wanted to do, be it Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Putin,… or even the US, where you once could legally own people.
And of course there is always room for discussion whether things that are legal should be legal. Or illegal. But the chances of that having an effect on those four people here are rather slim.
I was born in a country which was under a Fascist dictatorship.
Not long after, there was a Revolution, the Fascist Regime was overthrown and the country became Democratic.
Still now, half a century later, people in my country of birth remain quite sensitive and easilly alarmed by practices of those in power which are similar to the kind of things that those in power in the Fascist regime would do (for example, things like civil society surveillance).
I expect exactly the same from Germans, maybe just less of it since their Fascist days have been gone for longer and (judging by my own country), people’s alertness to and rejection of things “like what they used to do before” seems to fall the further away from the dictatorship days we are.
Or are you telling me that Germans are special and different from other people and hence it’s wrong to expect them to have a higher tendency than those who never had Fascism to reject practices by those in power now which are similar to those of their very own past Fascist dictatorship?!
PS: That said, maybe a people who has freed itself from Fascism is significantly more sensitive to anything that bares even just a passing ressemblance to what the Fascists use to do, than a people whose Fascism was overthrown by others, in which case I was wrong in expecting Germans to have a natural rejection of Fascist practices. That being so, it would also explain just how easilly the German power elites keep on bit by bit, doing more and more things like they did in the “old days” and most of the population meekly accepts it or even defends and aplauds it.
That’s something we also thought for a long time, that we are kind of bulletproof to something like this ever happening again.
The problem/main difference to your country: yes, it’s been longer ago, but also, we had reunification, where two very different places became one and defacto a large population living in a socialist dictatorship for decades had to integrate into fully-running country of the former ‘class enemy’. This rift still isn’t fully closed and it is something you won’t find in most other countries. This lead to a smaller degree of cohesion and a larger portion of people having difficulties to identify with our national architecture.
Furthermore, the people nowadays are way more influenced by the events of the German Partition and its aftermath than the Third Reich. And even there, those that themselves experienced mass surveillance and living in a state of injustice now seem to have no problems expanding surveillance and again oppressing the enemies, as long as it’s not them. In the end, people, irrespective of their nationality, can have a very short memory.
That makes sense.
I stand corrected.
from the article:
Sorry, I read your initial sentence as in ‘deporting someone who hasn’t been convicted of a crime’.
It’s not under EU law. Freedom of movement for EU citizens is a legally binding treaty obligation.
The TFEU has a provision in section 45 that allows member states to limit this freedom, e.g. for security reasons. It will be up to a court to rule whether a sufficient reason was present in these cases, but a state can legally strip you of these rights.
There’s no way calling for an end to a genocide (or even a war) is sufficient reason, and they likely know that. So it is, in fact, illegal.
Denying Israel it’s existence can be a sufficient reason. But we both are merely guessing, since we all do not know what actually happened/was said.
No it’s not what the hell? Or, well, if it then the EU is doomed because that’s not how a democracy is supposed to function.
It is part of the German ‘reason of State’, as also mentioned in the article. Hence, denying Israel it’s existence is a very very bad idea in Germany.
what antisemites? deporting people is a Nazi tactic so it’s ironic to label this “combatting antisemitism”.
I’m not supporting illegal deportation, but I’m also not supporting true “I really just hate jews because they are jews”-antisemites that unfortunately feel right at home in valid protests against Israel’s actions.
protests are public, those people are gonna show up no matter how progressive the protest.
most antisemites in Germany are pro-Israel, people that go at AfD marches to support their party’s line of Zionism by all means necessary in order to bring about the rapture of Jewish people from the Holy Lands.
I don’t understand, the rapture of the Jewish people by establishing a Zionist ethno state? I think it’s much simpler: The original fascists were antisemites because Jews were the scapegoat that could mobilise the masses due to a hatred for Jews that has been cultivated for centuries in Europe, it was en vogue. The fascist(oid) populists today use Arabs/Muslims (not that the average AfD supporter knows the difference) and therefore show public support with a regime that already shows little mercy for those. And yeah, true neo nazis, islamists and whoever else hate Jews will show up for the protests, and if there really need to be deportations, they should be first.
the deportation of anyone, regardless if they’re a political enemy or not, is a direct pipeline to normalizing fascism.
this is an article exemplifying how fascism always comes for trans people first and you’re here talking bs about islamists. most terrorists in Germany are white Germans.
I haven’t been clear. Yes, deportations are wrong (even though my heart really wants fascists out of the country), and yes, it’s alarming that at least half of the victims are trans/queer.
i agree entirely with you. i think the only way for Germans to get rid of fascism is to start tackling their white supremacist culture.
That’s true for all of Europe. But first, we’ll need to get our shit together and fend off agitprop from Russia, China, and, in the future, the US.
Jewish people are not an ethnicity. They are defined by religion.Alright then, ethno-religious state; see below.Jews are a classic example of an ethnoreligious group, being Jewish is not solely a question of religion. E.g. many Jews in the US identify as Jewish, but do not believe in Judaism. And religious hardliners in Israel have a very clear image of what kind of people can be real Jews.
Not necessarily, no. Organizers can publicly distance themselves from unwanted people beforehand and during speeches, as well as check people’s banners and clothing, and that will generally help quite a bit.
I don’t experience it like that. I think the right wing is genuinely split over whether to support a Jewish religiously-defined state or whether to support anything anti-Jewish.
which banners and clothing do you want to be censored? if you mean Free Palestine and from the river to the sea, don’t even bother as you’d be outing yourself as a zionist
Primo job jumping to conclusions. I was naming examples of actions. How organizers implement them is not something I am going to have a say in anyway.
I am saying though that interactions like this are probably unnecessary: https://files.catbox.moe/ssct8w.mp4 If you don’t understand German: The “reporter” is an Afd member who is asking a pro-Palestine protester about the historical Nazis and the protester responds that he likes the number “6 million” [as in 6 million Jews killed during Holocaust]. Also, ftr: I do not endorse using the Jandl quote over the video in this context.
I can’t research this particular incident if all you give out is a video without sources from local media saying whether he experienced repercussions or not.
I don’t get what this is supposed to prove, that anyone can put on a keffiyeh and say Nazi shit?
It’s not local media, it’s literally a nazi live streamer filming people for profit. Nonetheless, it’s proving that it’s not always hard to tease out actual antisemitism from a subset of the people attending pro-Palestine demonstrations. And I do find that a credibility issue.