Could Germany become the next France?

The son of a former Nazi General once said, 'Don't trust us Germans' in an interview with a British news outlet."

As long as our economy is great," said Niklas Frank in a 2017 interview about the outrage over Germany's refugee intake, "and as long as we make money everything is very democratic, but if we have five to ten years of heavy economic problems, the swamp (far-right) will become a lake and then the sea and will swallow everything".

Niklas is an author and journalist and has written strongly against the far-right and his father, Hans Frank, who was the Nazi governor-general of occupied Poland.

Niklas's fears about Germany are sadly coming true, and it might not take several years of heavy economic troubles either as he had predicted. The troubles can engulf the country sooner.

Germany today is a melting pot of a fractured society where minorities live in segregated urban neighbourhoods, which have long been deprived of state funds to maintain and improve basic infrastructure.

Minority groups face high unemployment rates, and harassment by law enforcement agencies. They live under the constant gaze of a hawkish press, which is ever so happy to use them as a punching bag.

In short, migrant groups in Germany are just as disillusioned about their future and disassociated with the wider society around them as they are in France.

According to the latest figures, nearly 25 percent of Germany’s population or 25 million people come from a migrant background.

Lack of Trust

The case of Wafaa Albadry, a German-Egyptian journalist, gives us a window to look at the kind of problems minorities have to face.

Some three years ago, Albadry had a racist encounter with a security guard at a supermarket. She filed a complaint and the matter went to court but she lost. Now the State Prosecutor has accused her of lying and insulting Germany and the federal police.

All charges against her were dropped at the first court hearing. There was clearly no purpose to take the matter up legally. It could have only served as a tool to intimidate and bully those who speak out against discrimination.

Minority communities have repeatedly complained of a lack of trust in the authorities especially as they face a right-wing onslaught.

Germany has seen a consistent rise in far-right violence. Last year, the country registered 23,000 far-right crimes, a rise of over five percent over the previous year. These included over 1,100 violent attacks.

In the first three months of this year, there have already been 124 attacks on Muslims and mosques across Germany, however, Burhan Kesici, Chairman of the Islamic Council for Germany says that several more went unreported.

Muslims and other minorities with immigrant backgrounds do not trust the police and the justice system to take their complaints seriously and therefore most don't report race or religion-based crimes. In some cases, the complaints are brushed aside, painting the victim as the perpetrator instead as in Wafaa's case.

The stark disparity

Social mobility hasn't been particularly speedy in Germany, Europe’s industrial powerhouse.

According to an OECD report, a child, whose parents' earnings are in the bottom 10 percent of the population, needs six generations or 180 years to reach the average national income in Germany.

Considering Germany's demographic makeup, that child probably comes from a migrant family home which has seen deep generational poverty.

According to an International Labour Organisation report, migrants earn almost 13 percent less than non-migrant workers across the EU.

This discrimination extends into the workplace as the unemployment rate in migrant communities stands at above 15 percent, that’s ten percent higher than the rest of Germany.

This breeds despondency, lack of social mobility means migrant children often lack aspirations and belongingness.

And the tabloids effectively signal out young migrant men as the apparent reason for all the troubles on the streets.

When someone with a migrant background decides to speak out against these issues, they are quickly silenced.

In a recent case, a Turkish origin lecturer was swiftly fired from her job, when she tweeted that she and her friends were worried about racist mistreatment by the police.

Such cases are contributing to rising tensions and further disillusionment in migrant communities, causing further divisions among migrants and others.

No longer foes

Frederich Merz, leader of the Christian Democratic Union, Chancellor Merkel's old party, recently said that he wouldn't shy away from working with the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party in some federal states.

That caused an uproar as the CDU had previously said it wouldn't work with AfD. But those considerations have faded away - the far-right is now a reality in Germany.

AfD regularly polls as the second largest political party in Germany, and not just in traditional eastern states, but also former CDU territory in the west.

Not all of their supporters come from the traditional far-right background, many come from Germany's disenfranchised silent majority. Should the AfD's rise continue in the same stead, the party is set to form a coalition government at the next German elections in October 2025.

This has emboldened its supporters, and while no direct link has been established, Islamophobia in Germany has soared in the last couple of years.

A recent government-commissioned 400-page report on Islamophobia suggests that at least one-third of Muslims in Germany have faced hostility because of their religion. Experts, however, assert the real numbers are likely higher since only 10 percent of Muslims appear to report hostility and hate crimes against them.

According to one expert 'almost half of the population of Germany believes, Islam doesn't belong here'.

Societal tensions in the tinderbox that is Germany can spark race riots, similar to those in France, across German cities.

The silent majority swamp, Niklas Frank talked about in 2017, is made up of the far-right and the elections of October 2025 will show if it becomes a lake or turns into a sea.