The Fear of the Other as a Political Project

The far right’s recent victory in Saxony-Anhalt, one of Germany’s 16 federal states, is not an isolated episode. In the regional elections, the AfD won around 44% of the vote with a campaign that placed tighter immigration restrictions at the heart of the debate.

Although this was a state-level election, the result reflects a broader trend: the hardening of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies across Europe and the United States.

The pattern usually begins in the same way.

Amid economic crises, insecurity and political dissatisfaction, complex problems are given an identifiable culprit. Immigrants come to be portrayed as a threat to jobs, public safety, culture and national identity. First, they are framed as the problem. Then, they become suspects. Finally, measures restricting their rights begin to seem necessary.

In Germany, the AfD advocates what it calls “remigration”, including the expansion of deportations. In France, the far right proposes “national preference”, which would give French citizens priority in access to social benefits, housing and public-sector jobs.

Some of this language has already been adopted by other parts of the political spectrum.

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, part of the Council of Europe, has warned that xenophobic rhetoric has become more widespread, with migrants and foreign nationals among its primary targets.

In the United Kingdom, the Runnymede Trust’s report A Hostile Environment analysed 62.7 million words from nearly 53,000 news articles and 317 parliamentary debates on immigration. The study shows how political and media language has helped associate migrants with illegality, surveillance and threat.

Words do not merely describe policies. They help make those policies possible.

In the United States, immigration authorities detained nearly 51,000 people in August 2026, setting a record for the third consecutive month. Those detained include people with no criminal convictions or final deportation orders, some of whom have pending asylum or regularisation applications.

United Nations experts have also warned about the combination of racist rhetoric from political leaders, intensified immigration enforcement operations and racial profiling.

Debating immigration, borders and reception policies is legitimate. The problem begins when a person’s origin, religion, language, appearance or skin colour is treated as evidence of criminality, cultural incompatibility or lesser entitlement to rights.

Contemporary racism rarely announces itself as racism. More often, it presents itself as a defence of public safety, legality, national identity or a supposedly threatened way of life.

Before a society will accept expelling someone from its territory, that person must first be symbolically excluded from the very idea of belonging.

This is how fear of the other ceases to be merely an emotion and becomes a political project.