On the 25th of September, the police were called to the campus of the University of Frankfurt to deal with a small group of protesters, who had entered a main building. The protesters were part of a group called Students4Palestine. They were engaged in a protest against a delegation from the University of Tel Aviv, who were visiting the University of Frankfurt as a partner university. The students were accused of intimidation, verbal abuse and antisemitism. The university was later reported as considering imposing a Hausverbot on fifteen of the protesters, who were thus students of the university.
Although in Germany, the accusation of anti-semitism can be indiscriminately applied to almost all forms of criticizing Israel, news reports rarely give details of what has actually been said. The main source of quotes of these allegedly anti-Semitic chants is the Verband Jüdischer Studierender Hessen. Examples of the allegedly anti-Semitic chants are: “Von Frankfurt bis nach Gaza – Yallah Intifada” (From Frankfurt to Gaza – all resist); “Alle gegen Zionisten, Mörder, Siedler und Faschisten” (all against Zionists, murders, settlers and fascists); “Huryia Huryia, Falasteen Arabyia” (Freedom, Freedom, Palestine is Arabic), and “Kindermörder Israel” (child-murderers Israel).
To understand how these chants, none of which invoked any reference to Jews, are still being interpreted as anti-Semitic, one has to follow the logic of justification at the centre of a substantial controversy involving the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which suggests that (some) critique of Israel could be interpreted as anti-Semitic. It should come as no surprise, that alleged war criminals, such as Benjamin Netanyahu, happily extend this definition to suggest that all criticism of Israel is be default anti-Semitic, since Israel is a Jewish State.
What is also apparent from the eagerness of the Jewish Student Association Hessen to call these chants anti-Semitic, is the suggestion that supporting Palestinians is by default anti-Semitic and resisting the illegal occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East-Jerusalem is, by default, anti-Semitic. In earlier posts, I have already explained the anti-semantic absurdity of such claims. What I want to focus on here instead, is the desperation that lies beneath it.
Factually and legally speaking, it is impossible to deny the plausibility that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. The recorded and live streamed actions of the IDF as well as statements made by officials representing the State of Israel and its government have made it very clear that objective of the military campaign, including the starvation of the people of Gaza, is to remove the population from the strip, in order to add a new piece of territory to “Greater Israel”, which is a project announced (again) by Netanyahu during the UN general assembly in September 2023, i.e. before the Hamas attacks of October 7th. From the point of view of Project Greater Israel, the Hamas attacks were extremely welcome, which explains why freeing the hostages was never a priority, as proven on many occasions by the actions of the Israeli State as well as the continuous protests by relatives and friends of the hostages. It also gives credence to the allegations, that Israeli officials had been warned prior to the October 7 attacks, for example by the Egyptian intelligence service, as well as by eyewitnesses from Kibbutzim close to the “border” with Gaza.
Over the past 2 years, the State of Israel has been exposed as a serious threat to international law, as well as to human rights and democracy, especially in Western nations. Accusations of anti-Semitism have been used to stifle any critique of war crimes or acts of ethnic cleansing by the state of Israel. This is particularly evident in Germany, where even the use of the word “genocide” in relation to Gaza is considered controversial, despite the fact that on the 26th of January 2024, the International Court of Justice declared that we had to assume that the accusation of Israel committing a genocide in Gaza have enough plausibility to warrant all signatory states (including Israel, the USA and Germany) to do everything they can to prevent this . Yet, despite this clear statement, Germany is still the second largest exporter of arms and military support to Israel (after the USA).
Just as supporting Israel over and above international law is part and parcel of the German Staatsräson, so is its continued support for genocide. Germany has committed two major genocides: 1904-1908 in what is now called Namibia, where they slaughtered and starved 80% of the Herero tribes, 1941-1945 during the Third Reich, where they murdered 6 million Jews and between 12 and 15 million non-Jewish (3.3 million Russian prisoners of war, 7-10 million Russian citizens, 2 million non-Jewish Poles, 500 thousand Roma and Sinti (about 70% of the total Roma and Sinti population in Germany were murdered, about 25% of those from occupied areas), 250 thousand mentally ill and disabled Germans and up to 100 thousand political enemies, including Jehovah’s Witnesses).
These figures are necessary as proof that Germany did not perform its genocidal activities exclusively on Jews. However, to state this as a matter of fact is already considered controversial, as it undermines the myth of Jewish exceptionalism, which – historically speaking – is not only essential for the legitimation of Zionism but also for the legitimation of anti-Semitism itself. Jewish exceptionalism has now taken on such an extreme form that condemning a genocide performed in the name of Zionism is already deemed anti-Semitic. Of course, there are also many, who prefer to engage in anti-semantics to create ambivalence about the very meaning of the word genocide, as this has proven to be a very effective strategy to weaponize the notion of antisemitism to stifle every form of critique on the state of Israel.
The German Staatsräson to undermine international law to continue to support Jewish exceptionalism and therefore (profit from) genocide is not antithetical to its own history. It also shows, perversely, that its emphasis on “memory culture” primarily serves specific, imperialist, political-economic interests that are unable to cover up the deeply racist, Eurocentric roots of German nationalism. The very idea that “never again” should only apply to genocides of Jews, as has been propagated by Zionism, is obviously racist in its very core as it denies the fundamental equality of human beings.
The very example of the History of Frankfurt University makes this abundantly clear. Founded in 1914 as a “citizens’ university,” the university carried from the beginning a reputation for liberal and modern scholarship. With strong ties to Jewish intellectuals, progressive academics, and critical social scientists, it was among the most innovative centres of research in the Weimar Republic. Precisely because of this openness, the university came under intense scrutiny and transformation after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933.
The onset of the Third Reich brought rapid “Gleichschaltung” (coordination) across German higher education. At Frankfurt, this meant the systematic removal of Jewish faculty, politically suspect scholars, and outspoken critics of the regime. Despite it being founded on the ideology of liberalism and modernity, the University complied without resistance. Between 1933 and 1935, a significant share of the teaching staff was forced into exile or dismissed. The most prominent example was the Institute for Social Research, led by Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, which relocated first to Geneva and later to the United States, where it became internationally renowned as the “Frankfurt School.” The loss of these scholars not only deprived the university of some of its brightest minds but also marked a decisive end to the critical intellectual atmosphere that had distinguished it before 1933.
The university leadership largely conformed to Nazi demands, enforcing loyalty oaths, adopting Nazi symbols, and allowing student organizations to be absorbed into National Socialist structures. Professors in law, medicine, and the natural sciences often went beyond passive compliance, integrating racial ideology and eugenics into their research. In medicine especially, Frankfurt became a site where racial hygiene was taught and where the intellectual justification for sterilization policies found fertile ground. In this sense, the university was not only a victim of political purges but also a collaborator in shaping and legitimizing Nazi ideology.
Students also participated actively in the transformation. National Socialist student groups rose to prominence, while dissenting voices were marginalized or silenced. Unlike the University of Munich, Frankfurt did not produce a well-known student resistance group such as the White Rose. Opposition remained limited to isolated individuals who acted privately rather than as an organized academic front.
With the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945, Frankfurt, like all German universities, faced both destruction and the opportunity for renewal. The Allied occupation authorities closed the institution temporarily, conducted denazification procedures, and investigated faculty members for their role under the regime. Some professors were dismissed for their complicity, while others were reinstated, sometimes controversially, on grounds of limited involvement. Denazification of universities was also primarily a performance of window dressing, rather than an actual clean up.
The postwar years saw a slow and uneven reconstruction. Material damage to university buildings was repaired, but more significant was the intellectual reorientation. The return of émigré scholars, most famously Horkheimer and Adorno, in the late 1940s and 1950s, symbolized the rebirth of Frankfurt’s critical tradition. The reestablished Institute for Social Research became once again a center of innovative thought, shaping debates on democracy, authority, and the legacies of fascism in postwar Germany.
By the 1960s, Frankfurt was widely identified as a hub of critical theory and left-wing student activism. Yet the shadow of its past remained: the university’s complicity under the Nazis, its failure to resist, and the ease with which it surrendered its liberal identity continued to be subjects of historical reflection.
In sum, the University of Frankfurt’s trajectory illustrates both the vulnerability of intellectual freedom under dictatorship and the possibility of renewal after catastrophe. Its story is one of profound loss during the Third Reich, followed by a postwar revival that re-established it as a leading institution of critical scholarship in Germany and beyond.
If we then consider the University’s response to the protest actions from its own students against its unwillingness to recognize what the UN and the ICJ have already recognized, that the State of Israel is engaged in a genocide, then it is clear that the lessons from the Third Reich have not been learned. Once again it complies with the politics of intimidation and repression, against safeguarding human rights, here in terms of the rights to protest against genocide and war crimes.
By engaging in the anti-Semantic performance of extending the definition of anti-Semitism into absurdity, the University aligns itself not only with the political establishment, but above all with the one political party that is most closely aligned with the anti-semitic legacy of German nationalism, namely the AFD. The AFD is the party where actual anti-Semitism has found its home. This is the party that advocates a memory politics in which the past is being repeated: criminalizing left wing opposition and associating it with specific ethnic groups, in this case “Muslims”. Therefore, it is very clear why the children of Nazism embrace Jewish exceptionalism. It is constitutive of their very nationalist ideology. The fact that they can now simply replace the word Jew with that of Muslim while at the same time criminalizing anyone who points this out, is nothing but an exact repetition of the rise of the NSDAP in the 1920. Comparing anti-Semitism and anti-Islamic racism is categorically absent from almost all political debates. Whereas it is very possible that some Muslims are indeed anti-Semitics and some Jews are indeed anti-Islamic racists, any suggestion that Islam or Judaism is inherently racist has to be rejected as obvious anachronisms. What is clear, however, is that all forms of racism correspond with strong forms of identity thinking. All forms of ethno-nationalism, including Zionism, are strong forms of identity thinking. This is why ethno-nationalism is the breeding ground of anti-Semitism and all other forms of racism. Indeed, it is easy to be Zionist and anti-Semitic, as the AFD is living proof of that.
Disaffected Sociology 
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