Minorities at risk Anti-migrant hate and xenophobia flourish in the 'time of cowards'

When I think of German democracy, I think of the Larsen B ice shelf: a vast Antarctic structure that remained stable for 10,000 years until – in just over a month, to the horror of shocked onlookers – it collapsed catastrophically.

- Musa Okwonga

Before last weekend’s election, the coalition led by the centre-left Social Democratic Party ( SPD ) fell apart thanks in no small part to the continual attempts at sabotage by the Free Democratic Party (FDP), its most junior member. Yet the other two coalition parties were also culpable  – the Greens, who failed to articulate a compelling enough vision for a future with clean energy, and the SPD itself, whose leader, Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, was mostly as invisible as his predecessor, Angela Merkel, was imposing.

Having lived and worked in Germany for 10 years, I have long understood Merkel’s tenure as an aberration in national politics. For all her flaws, she took a step of rare and historic bravery, welcoming a million Syrian immigrants. Yet this move was one from which her own party, the Christian Democratic Union ( CDU ), now cannot distance itself quickly enough. It is striking that, when Bashar al-Assad was overthrown late last year, the fi rst instinct of Germany’s newspapers and politicians was to try to work out how quickly all those Syrians could now go home.