Georgetown College Republicans hosted German AfD lawmaker Marc Bernhard on October 19. The Forward obtained recordings, including his claim that the Holocaust is:
“used as a weapon against Germany.”
Apparently the difficult part of discussing the Holocaust is how inconvenient the discussion has become for a German politician. Quite a thing to bring to an American Republican club.
On migration, his explanation was sweeping:
“Always, where you see problems it’s with Muslims.”
There it is. A religion has become an all-purpose explanation for whatever goes wrong. No need to sort out the particular problem when the suspect list can cover an entire faith. I would call that lazy even before getting to the bigotry.
The club defended its invitation in a statement to the Forward. It argued that the AfD's popularity deserved serious engagement and rejected the German government's designation of the party as extremist. It also said “allegations of antisemitism are totally baseless.” Jewish student Democrats condemned the invitation.
A party's polling numbers are an explanation for political relevance. They do not answer an objection to what the invited politician actually said. If a guest blames Muslims wherever problems appear, telling me that a lot of Germans like his party doesn't make the sentence any less bigoted.
The useful question for the hosts is what they want their audience to learn from this. How to investigate a specific migration policy? How to distinguish a person's conduct from their religion? Their guest supplied a much easier lesson: start with Muslims and work backward.
Nobody needed a visiting lawmaker for that. A university Republican club ought to be able to manage a better discussion than importing a scapegoat and presenting the shipping label as intellectual curiosity.
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