Anti-migrant hate is flourishing in Germany's 'time of the cowards'

Today’s vote will show how far xenophobia has been driving even some traditionally progressive parties

- Musa Okwonga

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.

Today, Germany is going to the polls. The coalition led by the centre- left Social Democratic party (SPD) has fallen apart, thanks in no small measure to the continual attempts at sabotage by the Free Democratic party (FDP), its most junior member. Yet the other two coalition parties are also culpable - the Greens, who failed to articulate a compelling enough vision for a future with clean energy, and the SPD itself, whose vote has tumbled by 10% and whose leader, Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, has mostly been 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 first instinct of Germany's newspapers and politicians was not to celebrate Merkel's role in saving Syrian lives. Instead, it was to try to work out how quickly all those Syrians could now go home.

The poll-leading CDU, meanwhile, has generally responded to the country's greatest challenges with pettiness or spite. Kai Wegner, when elected mayor of a capital city staggering beneath the weight of overpriced housing, chose not to pick a fight with property developers but to fuel a pointless culture war, pledging never to use gender- neutral language when in office.