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Anthropological Perspective
Rodrigo Llanes Salazar (*)
Four years ago, Germany celebrated the world championship in Brazil; With a goal from Mario Götze, he had beaten Argentina at the Maracana stadium. On the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, natives and tourists celebrated with fireworks, singing "Super Deutschland". Berlin, a cosmopolitan city that loves football, has lived in collective euphoria. Joachim Löw, technical director of the German team, (and one of the best paid around the world) was a real celebrity, his face appeared all over the city.
With the presence of Löw, another subject that prevailed in newspapers, news and bookstores in Berlin, was the controversial annexation of Crimea by Russia. One of the main questions was whether it meant the beginning of a new world order, characterized by a renewed confrontation between the East, led by the powerful Russia and China, and the looming of the world. North American and European West. Legitimate concern for a city that for decades has been divided between the East and the West by a wall.
Four years later I return to Berlin. On this occasion, the German national team did not even qualify for the knockout stages. The situation in Crimea is no longer headlines, but the concern for the power of Russia and China remains very present. The ambitions of these two giants are no longer the only symptoms of a new world order. The departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, the referendum in Catalonia for the independence of Spain and the rise of political parties in countries such as Italy, which also propose that their countries leave the European Union, announce not only a reconfiguration of Europe but also all the order of the world. And of course, Donald Trump
four years ago, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was heavily criticized for imposing economic policies and austerity measures that hit countries like Greece, it now appears as a progressive political leader. but from all over the world.
The situation of migrants in Germany has been worrisome for decades, but it was in 2015 when organizations such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees insisted that the problem in Europe was one of the biggest problems in Europe. is a "refugee crisis": only that year, nearly a million people, mostly from Syria and Afghanistan, have applied for asylum on the mainland.
In this context, Angela Merkel was admired and despised as he approached the current refugee crisis. In 2015, 890,000 refugees were allowed to enter Germany. The journalist Andreas Rinke wrote that "nothing has more determined the image of Angela Merkel in the world than the so-called refugee crisis." According to the ideological convictions of the opinions, her policy of 39, welcome with open arms caused in his day admiration, astonishment, but also mistrust and rejection. "
Until a few years ago, social theorists like German Ulrich Beck (died in 2015), politicians and artists agree that we live in a "globalized" world: free trade, the development of communication technologies and technology. 39, information, mbadive movement of people and common awareness of common problems Humanity, like climate change, seemed to confirm that we are indeed living in the global era.
Today, however, we find that elements of what some writers have called "deglobalization" are gaining strength: influential politicians like Donald Trump free market policies imposing tariffs; communication and information technologies are being interrogated to serve as control mechanisms or threats to democracy – to think of mbadive "smart" video surveillance in China, to use Facebook data or to dissemination of "false news" in electoral processes -. The nativist and anti-immigrant movements are gaining strength around the world and influential politicians – again, the example is Trump – question the existence of climate change.
In this scenario, Angela Merkel, along with French President Emmanuel Macron, have positioned themselves as the main defenders of the free market (the leadership of these two political figures has been characterized by the name "Mercron"). In trade and other issues, the German Chancellor dared to disagree with Trump's policy
Germany has also been a pioneer in the way it has faced challenges and dilemmas caused by the new technologies of information and communication. German privacy officials have demanded that WhatsApp stop sharing Facebook's user information; Faced with German concerns over the political interventions of other countries in the electoral process, Facebook has developed a filter of false news in Germany. Without a doubt, we can learn from the political will to regulate giants like Facebook and Google, in front of which citizens are more and more vulnerable, voluntarily or involuntarily.
In a few years, migration and the refugee crisis have had significant impacts in Berlin and the rest of Germany. The anti-trust ideology and Merkel's open door had to yield to political pressures. If, as I mentioned in 2015, Germany has opened its borders to nearly 900,000 refugees, in 2016 only 280,000 people arrived. Four years ago, in 2014, in the streets of Berlin, one finally found a German in a street situation, accompanied by a dog, asking for charity. Today, almost every day, I met a migrant or refugee seeking charity.
If the books of the news section of bookstores and newspaper headlines are indicators of the main contemporary concerns in Berlin, no doubt A central problem is the rise of the far right in Germany and around the world from the United States to Russia, Poland, Hungary and Turkey. In Germany, the main concern is the rapid growth of the party "Alternative für Deutschland" (Alternative for Germany, AfD). This party, created only in 2013, bases its speech on the rejection of the euro, but has also been proclaimed against the arrival of migrants and refugees, as well as against Islam.
Similarly, in October 2014, the city of Dresden was founded in European Patriots Movement against the Islamization of the West (Pegida, for its acronym in German), which manifests itself every Monday against immigrants and Muslim refugees. Only in 2016 there were 3,500 attacks against refugees in Germany.
In this political climate, in the 2017 federal elections, the AfD remained the third force of the German parliament and even reached the first place in the federal state of Saxony. It is the first time since the end of the Second World War that a racist and xenophobic party reaches this position in Germany. The rise of the AfD, the protests of Pegida and other neo-Nazi expressions have triggered the alarm among some citizens of Berlin. Ralf Teepe, an official working in the foreign service who protested neo-Nazism, said that "70 years later (from the Second World War), we have the feeling that History could be repeated. This is not something unlikely "(" The New York Times ", 18/04/18).
Although divisions are still present, between richer Berlin and East Berlin that experiencing gentrification processes, moving Berlin is a cosmopolitan city that has not only created remarkable memory policies (one can find various museums and memorials on the Holocaust), but also dared to laugh and make fun of the Nazis as a political act.
Since 2014, "Er ist wieder da" ("Is returned"), a satirical book by Timur Vermes in whose plot Hitler wakes up in October 2014 after having hibernated by nearly 70 years, has been a commercial success and even made a film in 2015. Several bookstores not only expose books on the far right, fascism and nationalism, but also organize readings in German and Arabic for refugee children on the problems of racism and gentrification. years of many streets of Berlin, one can find people with t-shirts and engravings in buildings with the legend "Berlin gegen Nazis" [“Berlin contre les nazis”]
Walking on Kurfürstendamm, a big avenue in Berlin full of shops luxury, probably a Syrian girl approached me to ask, I suppose, for money or food. It even shook me: it was the embodiment of the global refugee crisis. And I did not stop thinking: will this girl go to school and be included in Berlin society? Will it contribute, from its migration or refuge, to enriching our experience and understanding of humanity and diversity? more in the register of attacks against immigrants and refugees ?, will he remain as a person in the street asking for charity? The room is in the air; undoubtedly the problem is global.
Ps. This column will be back on Monday, August 6th. – Merida, Yucatan.
@RodLlanes
Researcher at Cephcis-UNAM
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