Germany's trans community battles right-wing falsehoods

The Self-Determination Act (Selbstbestimmungsgesetz) was initially heralded as a key piece of progressive legislation by Germany's center-left Social Democrat (SPD), Green and neoliberal Free Democrat (FDP) coalition government. "We simply want to make life a bit easier for a small group for which it has great significance," FDP Justice Minister Marco Buschmann told German public broadcaster ZDF.

But the act, which would make it easier for transgender, intersex and non-binary people to legally change gender, has led to heated debates in Germany fueled by hate speech and disinformation from the far right and conservative groups seeking to leverage the issue to further their own agendas.

"There's no money for pensioners, schools and the railway under the current government, but they now want to introduce nationwide gender identity advice centers for all those who don't know if they are male or female," the deputy leader of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party Beatrix von Storch told the German Bundestag in November last year.

Such attacks are "conscious strategic decisions" by the far right, says Sascha Krahnke*, an expert on transphobia and the far right at the Amadeu Antonio Foundation in Berlin, which campaigns against the far right, racism and antisemitism.

Krahnke says that far-right actors in Germany are looking abroad to the US culture wars, in particular, for new disinformation narratives to push against trans people as part of a broader strategy to mobilize voters in support of its authoritarian, nationalist agenda.

"It's nothing new. We had this already in response to the gay rights movement," Krahnke told DW.

"These are all mechanisms that have always worked on specific groups and communities, where you can see it is instrumental to the mobilizing people, to create fear, to politicize issues without it actually being about those groups," he said.

Disinformation part of a broader strategy to create division

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a US non-profit legal advocacy group, reported that speakers at a summit organized by the right-wing evangelical lobby Family Research Council in 2017 were open about their strategy to weaken transgender rights groups by separating them from traditional allies, for example, feminists, by using "progressive-passing rhetoric" in which transgender rights were depicted as "anti-feminist, hostile to minorities and even disrespectful to LGB individuals."

Krahnke says that's happening here in Germany too.

"We've achieved a certain level of emancipation with marriage for all and gay and lesbian life in general, those issues don't radicalize anymore, so now [the far right] has to attack an even smaller community where solidarity can more easily be broken," said Krahnke.

"It ultimately says: 'If you give them more rights it will be at the expense of those who have already fought for their rights, for example women and people subject to racism,'" he continued.

The EU released its annual disinformation report on January 23. Researchers found that LGBTQ+ organizations were heavily targeted as part of what the EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, called a new type of "warfare" not using bombs, but a "poison that can colonize your minds."

Analysis by the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) in 2023 found that misinformation and disinformation targeting the LGBTQ+ community is one of the "most present and consistent in the European Union."

A recent briefing to the European Parliament also warned that LGBTQ+ people in the EU were being singled out as targets of disinformation by foreign actors — most prominently the Russian government — as a means to sow friction and disunity between EU member states.

The problem is getting worse, according to Krahnke, as hate speech and disinformation narratives on social media filters into the mainstream press.

Anti-trans narratives a component of far-right ideology

Research by the Else Frenkel Brunswik Institute (EFBI), which monitors anti-democratic attitudes, and the Amadeu Antonio Foundation analyzed right-wing Telegram channels and groups in the eastern German state of Saxony.

It found that debates about the Self-Determination Act "characterized by queer and trans hostility" gained momentum in Telegram groups and channels after the plans for the bill were announced in June 2022.

Trans people were described in chat groups as "hybrid beings," "sick," "degenerate" revealing, the authors say, "neo-Nazi and racist longings for a pure, (sexually) unambiguous and healthy (people's) body." The idea of "hybrid beings" is also a trope of antisemitic propaganda.

The AfD in Saxony is polling at over 30% and is considered to be one of the party's most radical state-level branches and has been monitored by the Office for the Protection of the German Constitution (BfV), the domestic intelligence service, as a suspected right-wing extremist party since 2021.

The BfV states that LGBTQ+ misanthropy is a fundamental component of right-wing extremist ideology and agitation with its rejection of modern understandings of gender and family models in favor of a worldview "characterized by racism and nationalism."

"It is claimed that trans people are a threat: to women and children, but also for society as a whole. Radical right-wing groups can act as protectors in this context," Gabriel_Nox Koenig, a spokesperson for the Trans* Association in Germany (Bundesverband Trans*), told DW.

Gender issues are repeatedly taken up by right-wing groups because they resonate in the political center, Koenig says.

"That influences the terms of the debate: we're currently discussing whether trans people have human rights, not how these rights can be implemented," said Koenig.

Fears that progress against discrimination could be reversed

Debates about the Self-Determination Act continue to rumble on in Germany where trans rights groups have expressed concern that act could provide the basis for the legal exclusion of trans people from various parts of public life.

Justice Minister Marco Buschmann told Die Zeit newspaper early last year that the bill had been delayed because of concerns about the legal consequences of changing gender, citing the example of how visitors to a women's sauna could feel disturbed by the presence of a trans woman.

The number of reported anti-queer and anti-trans crimes in the area of "gender/sexual identity" increased from 340 in 2021 to 417 (classified under the newly introduced rubric "gender diversity") in 2022, according to data from the Federal Interior Ministry.

Since many trans and non-binary people do not report such incidents to the state authorities for fear of discrimination the Trans* Association in Germany estimates the true figures to be much higher.

With the AfD polling as the second-most popular party nationwide, Gabriel_Nox Koenig is clear about the implications not just for trans and non-binary people, but for other marginalized groups as too.

"All the progress that has been hard fought against forms of discrimination such as sexism, homophobia, transphobia or racism in the past decades would be reversed by the AfD. The situation for all groups who are discriminated against would deteriorate significantly," said Koenig.

*Name changed to protect anonymity.

Edited by: Rina Goldenberg

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