The success of the AfD in regional state elections in Germany has shown again that the far-right is no longer an outlier in European politics.

Their progress is in large part due to the mainstreaming of racist narratives by various governments and opposition parties and figures as well as the media.

Organisations like IHRC have been warning of the consequences for many years adopting far right narratives in a populist race to the bottom.

Our 2021 research into rising Islamophobia in Germany concluded that the country was uniquely poised in Europe to lead other nations in good practice or bad but warned that “the current situation is veering dangerously to the bad – with laws, policies and public rhetoric all imbued with and reproducing Islamophobic narrative and practice.”

But the far right advance has been a lot longer in the making. In 2006, we highlighted how citizenship tests in various German states were discriminating against Muslims.

There’s a direct line from then to the citizenship law that requires applicants to declare their belief in Israel’s right to exist. There have been many step-changes, cases of Islamophobic discrimination and systemic oppression often in relation to pro-Palestinian views and activism.

It is clear that the rise of the far-right and the increasingly aggressive pro-Israel stance of the German state cannot be seen in isolation of each other.