Discrediting, defamation, physical assaults: according to those affected, the threat usually comes from the right to right-wing extremist spectrum, but sometimes also “from the bourgeois-conservative center”.
Many employees of state-funded projects for “diversity design” feel threatened because of their work. This is shown by the results of a survey by the German Center for Integration and Migration Research, which is available to the German Press Agency.
For their 2020 study, the researchers initially contacted those responsible for 68 model projects that were managed through the “Live Democracy!” program. received grants from the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs. The projects funded under the heading “Diversity Design” deal with the problem areas of anti-Semitism, Muslim hostility, antigypsyism, homophobia and transphobia, racism as well as the subject area “Opportunities and challenges of the immigration society”.
Of the 50 organizations that completed at least part of the online questionnaire that was sent to them, around two-thirds (34 organizations) said they had “confronted concrete, imminent threats” in the past 12 months. These ranged from discrediting, slander and defamation (54 percent) to physical assault, which was reported by eight percent of the groups that took part in the survey.
When asked about the originators, those affected stated that the threats came for the most part from the right to right-wing extremist spectrum, which also includes so-called Reich citizens and conspiracy believers. Jewish initiatives have also described hostilities from the Islamist area and isolated attacks from the left-wing extremist, so-called anti-imperialist spectrum. Organizations that position themselves against transphobia have also reported attempts at defamation “from the bourgeois-conservative center”.
