Migrant 'pushbacks' crowned worst word of the year in Germany

Term for forcible expulsion beats 'language police' and misused Nazi terms to the award

This Iraqi family said they had been pushed back to Belarus eight times during the crisis at the EU's eastern border. AFP

Pushbacks – the forcible expulsion of migrants – gained further notoriety this week when the term was crowned Germany’s worst word of 2021.

A jury of writers and linguists selected the term, adopted as an English loan word in German, because it “sugar-coats an inhumane process” in which people are banished from Europe’s borders.

The word was used by activists, politicians and the media to describe claims of migrants being sometimes violently chased across borders, including by guards in Poland and Belarus, men armed with batons in Croatia and sea patrols in Greece.

The practice was blamed by name this week for an escalation in Mediterranean migrant deaths in 2021 which led to an average of five people per day drowning or disappearing in the sea.

But the German panel objected that “the use of this term hides the violence and sometimes deadly consequences that can be associated with forcing migrants away”.

It criticised the fact that even critics of pushbacks used the term, after rights groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Council of Europe condemned the practice by that name.

The government’s former chief spokesman Steffen Seibert used the expression last October when he denied that German police had been involved in pushbacks, despite reports to the contrary.

The term was chosen as “Non-Word of the Year” ahead of other contenders such as “language police”, deemed an unfair attack on people calling for inclusive terminology.

The jury also criticised the use of Nazi terminology by people making far-fetched comparisons between Germany’s darkest chapter and today’s coronavirus restrictions.

These included the use of the term “vaccine Nazi” for supporters of immunisation and “Enabling Act” for German health laws, alluding to a 1933 statute that gave sweeping powers to Hitler’s regime.

Some unvaccinated protesters wore yellow badges recalling the Star of David that Jew were forced to wear under the Nazis. The anti-vaccine protest scene has attracted scrutiny from German intelligence services.

Examples such as these constituted a “mockery of the victims of the Nazi dictatorship”, said the linguistic hall of shame panel.

There were more than 1,300 submissions for the award. A word may be eligible for censure because it offends human rights or democracy or is used as a jarring euphemism.

Previous winners included “climate hysteria” as a way of sneering at green initiatives and “collateral damage” as a euphemism for civilian deaths.