The German Alternative for Germany and Gendered Legislative Discourse

This paper explores the evolution of the populist far right Alternative for Germany’s legislative discourse on women and sexual minorities during its first term in the German parliament. In its campaign for the Bundestag the party adopted contradictory stances on gender issues, espousing both “homonationalist” (Puar 2007; Ayoub 2016) rhetoric and “heterosexual nationalist” (Siegel 2017) claims. The former associated feminism and LGBTI rights with western society, arguing Muslims and other immigrants to countries like Germany threaten to undo the gains made by domestic women’s and LGBTI movements and hence belong outside the nation. Feminists and sexual minorities, in contrast, are seen here as belonging in the country. Heterosexual nationalist claims argued feminism and LGBTI rights clash with traditional national virtues, calling for a return of traditional gender and sexuality norms, and with them the subordinate status of women and sexual minorities (Kuhar and Patternotte 2017). Here, feminists and LGBTI people are viewed as outside the nation and threatening to it. Using NVIVO software and qualitative analysis, the paper analyzes all parliamentary transcripts from 2017 – 2020 meetings of the Bundestag and tracks the AfD’s speech to determine whether it employed homonationalism, heterosexual nationalism, both, or neither while speaking in the nation’s highest legislature. It also explores whether the AfD’s language was adopted or echoed by other parties during these debates. Over the course of the AfD’s first term in parliament it quickly abandoned heteronationalism in favor of extensive heterosexual nationalist language. The word “gender” became an all-purpose insulting adjective in the far right’s discourse, often accompanied by pejorative terms such as “craziness” (Genderwahn). In efforts to counter the AfD other parties at times found themselves echoing the far right’s rhetoric. In short, the populist far right brought the heterosexual nationalist language of its party platform with it as it entered the Bundestag, filling scarce legislative time with sexist, homophobic rhetoric.