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Paper Short Abstract:

Centred on German reactions to the Gaza genocide, this paper highlights the sovereigntist continuities of 'post-national' discourses centred on Holocaust memory. By performing a cosmopolitan ethos, German neo-sovereigntism demarkates its boundaries both discusrively and physically.

Paper Abstract:

Based on online ethnography and observation of physical events, this paper aims to highlight the ‘post-national’ lineages of German neo-sovereigntist discourse, by focusing on the Gaza genocide. The latter has accelerated official German identification with Zionism, understood not only atonement for Nazi crimes but as part of a new muscular liberalism threatened by external Others.

Kundnani (2023) situates this shift in the way ideas of the EU as a deterritorialised ‘normative power’ have been replaced by talk of a ‘European sovereignty’ harking back to the colonial and whiteness-induced origins of European integration. Despite being lauded as a way of forging a 'post-national' identity fit for a globalised world, Germany’s Holocaust-centred ‘memory culture’ has been criticised for its blindspots towards anti-Muslim racism (Özyürek 2023). However, much of these particularisms have been criticised as aberrations from the allegedly cosmopolitan spirit of Erinnerungskultur.

Rather than approaching ‘deglobalisation’ and ‘sovereignty’ as a binary opposites, this paper argues that the boundaries between both can often be quite fluid. In contrast to right-wing populists (both in Germany and elsewhere) performing rootedness against the forces of globalisation, German elites perform a selective inclusivity to demarcate the boundaries of belonging, both symbolically and physically, and thus entrench sovereignty. By declaring Hamas 'worse than Nazis', the uncomfortable German past can be rehabilitated, while 'mass deportations' against real or alleged Hamas supporters can be justified. At the same time, these elites attempt to 'take back control' of historical narratives, perceived under threat by the growing visibility of past colonial crimes.