Germany has been in the news recently after a wave of cancellations made international headlines. The reason offered by the institutions involved, the German punditry, and the current government, is that contemporary art is saturated with antisemitism. But the rhetorical function of these unjust accusations becomes evident if we look at how they have been put to use: to mask racism as antiracism.

Though it is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when political encroachment began to manifest in Germany, it was well before the Hamas militants’ attacks on southern Israel communities on October 7. The allegations of financial mismanagement hurled at the Documenta 14 curatorial team after the 2017 edition offered a legal precedent to delegitimize exhibitions whose content proved not palatable to local authorities. The German parliament voted in favor of labeling the international Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as antisemitic in May 2019, subsequently giving cause for the cancellation of public events for figures such as Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe, and for a demand to end tax-funded “Israel-hatred.” The hounding of the Indonesian collective ruangrupa, curators of documenta fifteen in 2022, and participants such as the Palestinian collective The Question of Funding, followed the same script: conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism or contending that any comparison or analogy with colonial crimes trivializes the Holocaust. In spite of its vibrancy, documenta fifteen was reduced to a singular image: collective Taring Padi’s mural People’s Justice (2002), which included antisemitic imagery and was taken down within days of its unfurling. The embattled exhibition never regained its autonomy. In June 2023, Documenta interim director Alexander Farenholtz suggested that curators had been disinvited from the Documenta 16 finding committee after being politically profiled. This admission seemed to alarm very few, considering Germany’s violent history 
of suppressing dissent. Shortly afterwards, a smear campaign resulted in curator Ranjit Hoskoté’s resignation from the Documenta 16 finding committee in November 2023 and the subsequent withdrawal of all other members.

At his documenta fifteen opening speech in June 2022, German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he was unsure whether he ought to be there at all. He was disturbed the curators had “made political activism an art form.” He might as well have said: it disturbs me when the oppressed challenge the moral codes that affirm their oppression. After October 7, Steinmeier further admonished Arabs in Germany for not distancing themselves from Hamas. Shortly after, German authorities began cracking down on peaceful demonstrations and protests, and police were awarded discretionary power to seize placards and clamp down on slogans.

Cancellations have piled up in recent months, starting in June when Berlin’s Gropius Bau indefinitely postponed the October 6 opening of “Spectres of Bandung: A Political Imagination of Asia-Africa.” German host cities axed the 10th Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie, whose co-curator Shahidul Alam was accused of posting “antisemitic” content, and the “Afrofuturism” section of “We is Future. Visions of New Communities” at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, curated by Anaïs Duplan, also for their pro-Palestinian posts. South African-Jewish artist Candice Breitz’s 2024 solo show in Saarbrücken was cut without the artist even being notified. Palestinian artists such as Jumana Manna and Emily Jacir have received the most virulent attacks along with cancellations: Manna’s solo exhibition at the Heidelberger Kunstverein; Jacir’s talk at the Hamburger Bahnhof. Manna has aptly called the German erasure of Palestinian perspectives an “embargo on empathy.”

Whether Documenta’s international reputation—or that of German institutions—is salvageable does not seem to concern to the current government. Instead, authorities began introducing contractual clauses that will make accessing public funding conditional on artists adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which includes “the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.” In early January, the Berlin Senate tried to oblige all grant recipients to signal their commitment to the IHRA, and, in addition, to recognize Israel’s right to exist, while pledging that no public money would somehow trickle down to “extremist” associations or activities.

No one contests that antisemitism cannot be tolerated; what is contested is the ongoing attempt to codify political dissent as a hate crime. The so-called “antidiscrimination” clause was implemented under the guise of pluralism, but artists from countries without diplomatic relations with Israel (such as Lebanon or Iran) might not be able to tick certain boxes, making the clause, in effect, discriminatory. It is also legally dubious, because applicants cannot be obliged to do something when that obligation is ill-defined. Above all, it clashes with constitutional guarantees safeguarding freedom of political opinion: if criticizing Israel is by definition antisemitic, political discussion is foreclosed. Germany also maintains federal and state positions dedicated to fighting antisemitism, but, by design, none of the antisemitism commissioners is ethnically Jewish. Quite the contrary, Jewish intellectuals are often targets for censorship. Can anyone imagine an all-male task force committed to fight sexism? Or an all-white antiracist task force?

More importantly, the line between political speech that is constitutionally protected, and hate speech, which can be justly banned, is ultimately ideological. In the wake of October 7, the German press began publishing a barrage of articles best summarized by one headline: “Postcolonialism: The Theory That Begets the Terror!” This is why there is cause for concern when Joe Chialo, the state minister for culture and social cohesion, contends that “we need to distinguish art from activism with artistic elements.” Is all political art to be banned, or just those artworks whose content is not aligned with state policy? As recent events demonstrate, the defense of liberal values can, and often does, acquire a use-value for those with an illiberal agenda. Governments often actively promote their preferred art forms, but they rarely give their artistic preferences the force of law. When they do, we can no longer call them liberal democracies.

After a great deal of organized resistance to the IHRA clause and a call to for a cultural strike in Germany, the Berlin Senate temporarily withdrew it. But while this question is particularly contentious in Germany, because it unsettles the atoning for historical crimes the state believes it deserves congratulations for, the same processes are underway in the United States and elsewhere. Though we might not care to admit it, behind the moral order of modernity, a racial order remains hidden. And this is what the ongoing censorship reveals and what they refuse to atone for.

Ana Teixeira Pinto is a writer and cultural theorist based in Berlin. She is a professor at the HBK Braunschweig and a theory tutor at the Dutch Art Institute. Her writings have appeared in publications such as Third Text, Artforum, Afterall, e-flux journal, Manifesta Journal, and Texte zur Kunst.