The New and Old Crusaders - Right-Wing Populism, Racism, and the Return of Delusion

There are moments when one wonders whether history repeats itself - or whether it is simply mocking us. Friedrich Merz: Talks like someone eager to please - and hits the tone of those long lost - Thursday evening, Fox News. Karoline Leavitt, 28 years old, White House press secretary, looks into the camera and says: "The main constituency of the Democratic Party consists of Hamas terrorists, illegal immigrants, and violent criminals." These are not slips of the tongue. Not ironic asides. This is the new vocabulary of governments that no longer see the enemy within in crime, but in democracy and in humanity itself.

One might have thought that after the years of brutality during Trump’s first term, there would eventually be a limit. But the America of 2025 has long abandoned such notions. The Trump administration now speaks as if it were occupying a country, not governing one. And while Leavitt smiles as she applies the term "terrorists" to millions of Americans, the anchor nods as if she had just given the weather forecast. The Democrat and governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, reacted in disbelief. "Make it stop," he wrote - a condensation of his dismay, cited in U.S. media as emblematic of the helplessness many now feel. But America does not stop. It races on - and takes everyone still listening along for the ride.

Shortly afterward, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared before the press, this time as Secretary of Health. The topic: in vitro fertilization. But instead of medical facts, there was apocalyptic rhetoric. "Parents aren’t having children anymore," Kennedy declared solemnly - only to proudly add in the same breath that he himself had seven. It was a performance that revealed more about the state of political culture than about reproductive medicine. A man using science as a stage to preach moral crises that do not exist in that form.

And while America staggers between religious self-exaltation, moral panic, and authoritarian rhetoric, Europe looks on - and begins to adopt dangerously familiar tones. In Germany this week, a remark by Chancellor Friedrich Merz sparked a debate symptomatic of the shift in language: Merz said, "Of course, we still have this problem in the cityscape" - referring to people with migrant backgrounds.

What followed was less a discussion about racism than a lesson in its suppression. An online poll by t-online showed: 82 percent of respondents supported the statement "No, that’s not racism," represented by Christoph Schwennicke - only 11 percent agreed with Nilofar Breuer, who clearly stated that it was indeed a discriminatory remark. The rest hovered in between.

t is a mirror of social conditioning: Those who hear for years that migration is a "problem," those who are fed daily images of threat and overforeignization, eventually begin to believe that discrimination is only racism when someone openly uses the N-word. The real shift has long taken place in people’s minds. When a majority no longer recognizes a racist remark but mistakes it for "truth," that is no accident - it is the result of systematic rhetorical normalization.

And as if all that were not grotesque enough, the matching sister in spirit emerges from Europe: Beatrix von Storch. The AfD member of parliament boasted publicly about passing on the names of European politicians to Trump’s circle - as part of her "fight" against the Digital Services Act, the law designed to curb hate and disinformation on online platforms. In other words: she actively works to ensure that lies continue to live. A German politician as a courier of American propaganda - one couldn’t have imagined it even in the scripts of House of Cards.

All this forms a picture that has more to do with 1933 than with 2025. The language of dehumanization has returned - this time in tailored suits and press briefings. The enemies are no longer called Communists or Jews, but migrants, Democrats, journalists. The method remains the same: fear, anger, division. But perhaps the worst part is not the hatred itself, but its banality. Today it comes in talk-show lighting, Fox studio gloss, and PR-friendly smiles. Racism is sold as "law and order," censorship as "freedom of speech," and war as "self-defense." The audience applauds - not because it believes, but because it has long been numbed.

What remains is the realization that fascism never disappears. It merely changes clothes. It now wears TV makeup, quotes Bible verses, uses hashtags, and calls for "parental rights" while dismantling everyone else’s. And Europe? It watches - as always. It watches as American extremists dictate the discourse and their European counterparts obediently follow along. People talk about "diversity of opinion" when they should be talking about decency.

Perhaps that is why we once again need courageous people, genuine investigative journalism without state subsidies, because it is the last functioning early warning system of democracy. Because when populism appears in a suit and tie, mockery becomes the only form of self-defense left. And sometimes, when Karoline Leavitt speaks in the White House, Beatrix von Storch sends names to Washington, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. proudly preaches about his seven children - and Friedrich Merz in Potsdam says that the "cityscape is a problem," while 82 percent in a t-online poll in Germany believe racism is merely a matter of perspective - one wonders whether they are all singing the same chorus. Only this time the refrain is louder, more global - and eerily familiar.

The real madness of our time is that people do not think this way out of malice, but out of fatigue. Out of fear, overwhelm, and the constant bombardment of easy answers. Over the years, fear has become a worldview, overwhelm a political tool, and agitation a television format. The racism that results from it is rarely loud - it sounds reasonable, everyday, and is therefore so dangerous. Most people feel that something is wrong, but they have forgotten how to name it. And that is precisely where responsibility begins: to sharpen language again, to speak truth again, even when it is uncomfortable. Because when society forgets how to recognize injustice, it has already begun to accept it. One might say, it is also a form of climate change - the mental greenhouse effect of the 21st century.