Remigration is the bad word of the year 2023. We have to resume the debate and take a stand against the garbage from the right.

The “Unword of the Year” 2023 will be announced by Susanne Spieß, linguist and spokesperson for the jury. Photo: Nadine Weigel/dpa

The bad word of the year 2023 is “remigration”. Wait a minute, now many commentators are realizing, isn't this unfortunate story with this secret right-wing conference in Potsdam and its publicized idea of ​​some sort of blood and soil 2.0 ideology just a few days old, and yet However, is it already 2024? And anyway: the Nazis can once again congratulate themselves that their bad words continue to be hyperventilated for a few more days. The shift of discourse to the right was successful.

Could be. But it may also be that, for fear of paying too much attention to the right, we should not miss the moment to defend ourselves in a much less defensive way than simply with silence. Not jumping over the stick?

Rather the other way around: there are things you can't keep quiet about. And it seems that something started to move over the weekend: it is somewhat reassuring to see that social change in this country can also turn out differently than to the right.

Tens of thousands of confident civil society people took to the streets of Berlin, Potsdam and other cities over the weekend to demonstrate against a potentially uncomfortable concept: “remigration”. The mass deportation of people. The Unwort jury, mostly linguists, reacted quickly: they understood what their contribution could be, as part of a democratic civil society with some reach in the media. They used the megaphone that they are given once a year. Impressions from a demo weekend continue, giving hope that this feeling of optimism will not fade so quickly.

By the way, the jury was not a year early in its choice, because “remigration” has been a dirty word in far-right discourse for a long time. The fact that this fact obviously hasn't interested enough people in this country for too long should also give us pause.