The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is strengthening anti-Semitism research and research on right-wing extremism and racism in Germany with a total of 35 million euros.

From now on, research associations on the subject of anti-Semitism will be funded with a total of 12 million euros over four years, which will deal with anti-Semitism in schools, in the judiciary, in social media, conspiracy myths in the background and other topics.

Heike Schmoll

Political correspondent in Berlin, responsible for “Bildungswelten”.

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In addition, further funding announcements in the amount of 23 million euros are to come shortly, which are in connection with the cabinet committee to combat right-wing extremism and racism. "Anti-Semitism and racism have no place in Germany," said Federal Education Minister Anja Karliczek (CDU) at the presentation of the research program. The poison of anti-Semitism for the social context must be fought with all determination.

The research projects funded by the BMBF should help to develop suitable measures to prevent and combat anti-Semitism in education, civil society and politics.

It is about how anti-Semitism gets into schools, what can be done to make people immune to hate speech on the Internet and to work closely with partners in practice.

It should not be that people in our country feel threatened because they belong to a different faith or a different nationality.

Despite multiple inquiries, Karliczek did not comment on the statements of the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maaßen, who is running for the Bundestag in Thuringia.

This is democratically set up, that is to be accepted.

Then the voters decide, said the minister.

Klein sees a shift in discourse

The Federal Government's Commissioner for Anti-Semitism, Felix Klein, pointed out that anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism also formed the ideological glue that held the different groups together in the so-called lateral thinker demonstrations. Conspiracy myths of all kinds are booming. There have been "shifts in discourse that have made positions that can be said and implemented that we cannot tolerate".

The scientific director of the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, Frank Bajohr, pointed out that attitudes threatening democracy are often only the tip of the iceberg of various, including anti-Semitic, attitudes that need to be analyzed. He recalled that the glamor of the 1920s would have masked the massive anti-Semitic structures in the Weimar Republic.

It was not possible for Jews to go on vacation unhindered. They were forced to consult warning lists with hotels and places where they were not allowed to go because the institutions in question publicly stated that they did not want any Jewish guests. It is important to analyze problematic attitudes in society through interdisciplinary research. It is important to distinguish between anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism despite all possible overlap and also to give greater consideration to anti-Semitism related to Israel.