German Nazi party advances bill deeming postcolonial studies antisemitic

Berlin- Germany’s second largest party Alternative for Germany (AFD) has advanced a bill demanding to deem postcolonial studies antisemitic.

The Nazi party, which has been recently seeing a rise among Germans, advanced a bill titled “Fighting anti-Semitism at its roots – Using federal funds for the Global South special program to address post-colonial ideology.” The bill claimed that postcolonial studies are incapable of taking anti-Semitism seriously as a problem because they understand it as “just another form of racism… While the continued demonization of Israel reproduces anti-Semitic thought structures.”

The bill criticized theories made by prominent scholars such like Achille Mbembe, Gayatri Spivak, and Judith Butler.

It criticized Spivak for seeing Israel as a colonial state, and Judith Butler for stating that Hamas’ military operation on October 7th was an act of resistance and calling for contextualizing resistance acts. Also, it denounced Anti-imperialism’s division of powers to rulers and oppressors on one side, and the ruled and oppressed on the other side. “With such a worldview, one can become blind to the fact that these supposedly oppressed and weak people can also carry out Islamist terrorist attacks – for example against a state that one has classified as evil per se”, the bill claimed.

The far-right party mentioned Columbia University professors, many of whom are specialized in post-colonial studies, who signed a statement, showing solidarity with the Gaza Solidarity Encampment students.

“Postcolonial ideologemes therefore play a key role in denouncing Israel as a colonial project, when they classify Jews as settler-colonialists and as a kind of extended arm of the West”, the bill added, deploring comparing any thing to the Holocaust, which the bill considered a result of the “reduced definition of anti-Semitism.”

In 2023, a poll showed that support for the German far-right AfD hit an all-time high of 23%, making it the second most popular party in the country.

Since 7 October, Germany has taken an aggressive stance to defend Israel and its genocide in Gaza. Last month, its parliament passed a bill obliging people applying for naturalization to affirm Israel’s “right to exist” ad in April, the government banned British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sitta from entering Germany to address a Berlin conference about his work in Gaza.