Who Won the U.S. Presidential Debate?

It is not the first time the country fixates on demonising a racialised group and blaming it for its crises.

The announcement came in the aftermath of a deadly knife attack that killed three people in Solingen, western Germany; the attacker, a Syrian refugee who had been denied asylum status and was supposed to be deported, was accused of belonging to the ISIL (ISIS) group.

Some may be surprised that such a draconian measure has been imposed by the liberal-left coalition made up of the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the Liberals. But the reality is there is a shift to the right across the German political spectrum accompanied by raging Islamophobia.

Analysts have pointed to the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as a driver of the rightward shift. Indeed, the party has been making significant gains at the national and state levels. At the start of the month, it won the elections in the eastern state of Thuringia with 32.8 percent. In the eastern state of Saxony, it came second with 30.6 percent, just 1.3 percentage points behind the centre-right Christian Democrats.

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