We are currently experiencing a time of widespread and dangerous division. Donald Trump is dividing the US, the US government is dividing the democratic West, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is dividing German society, Europe is divided over the issue of migration and the whole world is divided over how to deal with climate change. The world is becoming polarized, and the gaps between different social groups and entire countries are deepening, observers warn.
At the same time, the pile of tasks needing joint action is growing. Wars, conflicts, migration, trade, climate, social issues and problems surrounding technological progress affect the entire world and pay no heed to divisions and gaps.
For a long time, democratic societies enjoyed the reputation of being better at solving problems. It was assumed that if social challenges were confronted jointly and openly, the chances were higher of finding good solutions that were supported by a broad majority.
But in our increasingly polarized world, this reputation has taken a hit. The willingness to compromise and come to agreements has declined, and the political mood is one of growing intransigence.
The sociologist Nils Teichler from the Research Institute for Social Cohesion (FGZ) at Germany’s Bremen University warns about the consequences of polarization. If groups within a population block each other, political compromises become impossible, he told DW in an interview.
“The more strongly attitudes to a group are pre-established and the more strongly differences in the sympathy felt for different groups are based on just single characteristics, the more social cohesion is endangered,” he said.

AfD popularity and widespread prejudices

In a current study on social division, the institute has discovered a striking phenomenon: In places where the far right is strong, divisive attitudes extend far beyond the people who vote for it. To put it more simply: In AfD strongholds, even people who do not vote for the party are more prejudiced against minorities.
The researchers examined the connection between regional successes of the AfD and sympathies for particular social groups. “We find indications that in regions where the AfD was particularly politically successful, the people there give lower sympathy ratings to disadvantaged groups and social minorities,” Teichler said.
He said the more negative attitudes were mostly directed at migrants, Muslims, gay, lesbian and non-binary people, and people with little education. “That is, we find indications of division in regions in which the AfD is stronger,” he said.
What was there first: the division or the far right? According to Teichler, the two go hand in hand.

Instrumentalization of the migration issue

The far right has also warned about social division. But it names just one main driving force behind it: the issue of migration. It calls for closed borders and fights migration. US President Donald Trump constantly depicts immigrants as criminal and dangerous. AfD leader Alice Weidel has spoken of Muslims as “headscarf girls.”
Such populist tones can also be heard in mainstream German society. Even the likely next German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, spoke in the past about children from immigrant families as “little pashas,” a formulation that referred to Muslim families.
“The shift to the right that we are seeing at the moment has affected almost all parties,” says Cihan Sinanoglu, the head of the National Discrimination and Racism Monitor at the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM). He says that the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) are all partly responsible for some of the most restrictive laws on asylum and immigration.
Sinanoglu adds that it is wrong to think it is possible to pull voters away from the far right and bring them back to mainstream society by putting restrictive policies in place. Such policies are, at any rate, not a way of countering the racist agenda of the AfD, he explains.
“That is shown by the example of eastern Germany, where many fewer refugees and people with ‘migrant backgrounds’ live than in the west of the country. At the same time, however, that is where we have the AfD strongholds,” he says.
Sinanoglu, a sociologist, welcomes open debate on migration and on the limits to society’s capability to cope with it. But, he says, it is a political failure to reduce the divisions in society to the issue of migration.

Widespread exclusion

And it is a failure that comes at a high price, above all for the migrant community, he warns.
“For example, if we now talk the whole time about irregular migration, migrants are very, very aware who is really meant in these debates: they themselves,” he says. German mainstream society, he says, clings to norms that exclude migrants even if they have been in the country for decades.
What is happening now, he says, is that migrants are symbolically being stripped of their citizenship, with far-reaching social consequences. “People are withdrawing; they are living in fear; they are thinking about emigrating. This puts a strain on our romantic relationships, our friendships,” he says.
There is no doubt in his mind that the far right is driving this division. But, he says, Western societies make it much too easy for such forces. According to him, that is because the politicians in charge — whether in Germany, Britain, France or the US — do not address the true cause of division in their societies: social issues.
“We have to talk about substantive issues; we have to focus on these social issues and not hold up ideals and values of some kind that will never apply to many parts of this society,” Sinanoglu says in reference to abstract debates on social cohesion. He says what really matters is affordable rents, fair salaries and opportunities to climb the social ladder.
The question of cohesion and security in a society is wrongly being framed only in terms of the migration issue, he says. “Whose security are we talking about, really? The people who talk about security and order in terms of migration are the same people who have flexibilized the labor market, who have made jobs more precarious and who have brought about the lack of security in people’s lives in the first place,” he says.
For Sinanoglu, the rise of the far right in the Western world is a consequence of division. Of social division.