"The Smart Ones Vote AFD": Racializing Auslaender through Appeals to Womanhood

During the campaign for the 2017 federal election, German far-right, populist party Alternative für Deutschland [AfD] made frequent appeals in posters, party programs, and leaflets to notions of women’s safety. These appeals referenced the sexual assaults that occurred on New Year’s Eve 2015 in Cologne and other cities throughout Germany, as well as to the alleged vulnerability of Muslim women at the hands of Muslim men. Posters––including one depicting a series of pepper spray canisters and reading “Since Cologne, many women from Berlin have strengthened their defenses. The smart ones vote AfD”, were not uncommon, nor were posters suggesting that the proper way to produce new Germans was not through immigration, but rather through “German” women procreating. In addition to these discourses focusing on white, German women as the producers of the nation, and as needing protection from illiberal and dangerous non-Western men, the AfD emphasized the need to protect Muslim women from their own culture and religion. Borrowing from feminist discourses, the AfD––and other conservative parties––argued that bans on veiling practices, resisting the incorporation of Islam into German culture, and preventing the construction of mosques were important ways of protecting Germany’s Western tradition from an inherently incompatible Islam that subjugates women. But these discourses are not unique to the AfD, let alone to the contemporary period. Indeed, instances of these same discourses can be found in Imperial German policy surrounding the Poles and colonial subjects. Indeed, as many scholars have argued, women and womanhood have always been key aspects of producing nationhood and building its boundaries. Thus, building on Sara Farris’ concept of femonationalism, this paper historicizes these contemporary discourses by showing how they develop and perpetuate earlier colonial discourses, both using women to produce racialized boundaries for the nation, and about racialized/nationalized womanhood.