German Society Between ‘Open Doors' for Refugees and ‘the End of Tolerance'? Representations of Migration in Contemporary Germany and the Rising Tide of Populist Nationalism, Anti-Immigration and Islamophobia

German Society between ‘Open Doors’ for refugees and ‘The end of tolerance’?  

This research paper’s aim is two-fold. It will start with a broader discussion of representations of migration in contemporary German media and explore these in international and historical context.

It will then focus on the political agenda and ideological underpinnings of the German PEGIDA movement and examine these within a long tradition of populist nationalist and racist discourse in German history.

The paper reviews the rise and current political success of the right-wing populist German PEGIDA movement (‘Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West’) and examines its agenda between nationalism, anti-Immigration and anti-Islamism.

My research hereby identifies discursive intersectionalities of ‘race’, nationalism, religion and gender in Pegida’s agitation and critically reflects on the group’s self-representation in popular media - flanked by attempts to denounce critics as representing the ‘Lying Press’ [Luegenpresse], a term directly borrowed from German Nazi Propaganda of the 1930’s and 1940’s.