When the European Parliament traded debate for a chant

As a journalist covering migration and racism, I have long analyzed the mechanics of political scapegoating. I understand the economic anxieties that drive these cycles and the theater of finding villains who cannot vote. Yet, the language used in Brussels on June 17, 2026, crossed a threshold. When politicians target a policy, the debate remains within the bounds of democratic discourse. When they target a category of human beings with a chant of “them” and “back,” they are no longer debating legislation; they are defining an exclusionary identity.

The irony is sharp. Germany, which often leads these hardline shifts, simultaneously faces a demographic crisis that demands hundreds of thousands of foreign workers annually. Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently championed the need for qualified global labor, framing Germany as an open, liberal nation. These two realities—the urgent economic need for migration and the performative cruelty of the parliamentary chant—are fundamentally incompatible. The slogan demands a return to places that are often unstable, ignoring the fact that European foreign policy, arms sales, and broken promises regarding local staff in places like Afghanistan have played a direct role in creating the very displacement these politicians now condemn.

The European Union was founded on the ruins of a continent that once organized itself around the exact same rhetoric of “them” and “back.” By adopting this language, the institution does not merely threaten migrants; it dismantles the foundational promise of its own treaties. For those of us who have built lives in Europe, the chant forces a painful re-evaluation: was the promise of equality a permanent commitment, or was it merely a conditional status, subject to revocation the moment the political climate turned cold?