Deportations as a Way of Manufacturing Consent

By Omnia Magdy

Four pro-Palestine activists face possible deportation from Germany this month due to their participation at pro-Palestine protests. The “Berlin Four” are EU and US citizens who have not been charged with any crime but who the state has deemed a “threat” to public security. While a court has declared that the deportation of one of the EU citizens cannot be carried through, these political deportations serve as a tactic to instill fear within the pro-Palestine movement.

Deportations are a mechanism used by the ruling class to stifle dissent. For over one and a half years of ongoing genocide, the German political establishment has threatened to deport immigrants who raise their voice in soldiarity with Palestine. The ruling Christian Democrats (CDU) even wish to revoke non-white Germans of their citizenship for what it has deemed “terror support”. The absolute majority of deportations and threats of deportations have been used against black and brown immigrants. Only last month two Gazans faced potential deportations from Berlin to Greece. These deportations were suspected of also being deeply politically motivated. Currently the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees is not processing the asylum applications of Gazans because the situation in Gaza is supposedly unclear. Harassing Palestinians and immigrants in Germany by threatening their immigration and asylum status is a mechanism the state uses to manufacture consent connected to a broader goal of crushing opposition to German imperial interests.

The ruling class in Germany fears that the Palestine solidarity movement because it has the potential to shake not only lucrative German weapons deliveries to Israel but also its economic and political influence in the region as such.

Repression and criminalization against the pro-Palestine movement in Germany takes on many forms, be it excessive police violence, doxxing of activists, banning of events, deportations, unemployment or house raids. While 70% of the German population does not support Israel’s war in Gaza, 70% of the population is not demonstrating on the streets. Hence these repressions serve to scare off those 70% from becoming active. For over 14 months of ongoing genocide, there has been a daily campaign by the ruling political establishment and bourgeois media to defame the pro-Palestine movement as Antisemitic, violent, and Islamist. On an almost weekly basis, there are cases of those who raise their voice against the genocide getting fired and of demonstrators getting beaten up by the police.
These repressions serve to tell the general public, “you may be against the German state’s support for Israel, but look, if you raise your voice, you will be defamed as an Antisemit, you may lose your job, you may have your house raided, and you will, quite literally, be beaten on the street. And if you are a non-German citizen, you will be deported. Even being a white immigrant with an EU passport does not make you safe.”

Furthermore, repressions against the pro-Palestine movement serve to divide and conquer and to lower the morale of those who continue to demonstrate, in other words, to weaken the movement in general. These repressions must be seen in a wider context of the ruling class consolidating its power.

In the US, a crusade against free speech has been launched by the state against non-citizen, mainly Muslim, students. Merely writing an article or attending an anti-genocide protest can lead to imprisonment and deportation. German academia often purports a liberal superiority to authoritarian developments in the US or elsewhere. Yet, the last one and a half years have shown that German neoliberal academic institutions have not only stifled dissident voices but broken the very liberal venire of academic freedom that they purported to uphold.

The US but also German silencing of pro-Palestine voices has shown to be the door-opener to further authoritarian infringements be it on queer rights, women’s rights, or diversity and equality programs as such.

Stating that struggles are interconnected is not an empty phrase. The cruel irony in the US is that those departments and professors who refused to raise their voice against the genocide in Gaza or even in solidarity with their students who faced repressions under Biden, are now the same departments and professors whose own academic freedom is being attacked by the Trump administration for whom any even superficially progressive content is conceived as a threat.

That is why it is important for those in Germany who have been intimidated by the state from speaking up against genocide in Gaza, to raise their voice now. The famous quote by a German Pastor, Martin Niemöller reads:

“First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me”

For today’s day and age, it could be changed to “first they came for the Palestinian-solidarity protestors.”

A demonstration against the deportation of the #Berlin4 is taking place in Berlin on Friday, 18th of April at 4PM at Alexanderplatz in Berlin. Palestinian groups, human rights organizations and socialists are mobilizing for as many people as possible to attend, everyone who is able to should attend.