As well as a “word of the year”, Germany also has an “unword of the year”. The latter is a word or expression that undermines human dignity and democracy, or discriminates against groups, usually with some form of euphemism. Think “collateral damage”, which means “killing civilians”.
The Unwort des Jahres 2023 was “Remigration”. This is a neutral-sounding replacement for “Ausländer raus” for the AfD and other identitarian groups. The idea behind it is to ruin the lives of millions and create a state of fear for many more, all to satisfy the paranoid hatred of racists. Nobody benefits from this insanity, but what else can you expect from blindly following baseless superstition?
The German government of the 1930s spent a lot of time working on remigration in order to get rid of the undesirables in their population. After scratching their heads over the logistics for a number of years, they decided that murdering everybody and burning the evidence was the most cost-effective option.
The State Department in the USA has found the resources to set up a new Office of Remigration. At a stroke, the US government places itself on the same level as the most extreme and radical neo-nazis in Europe. They have the same imaginary problem as 1930s Germany: millions of undesirables that the regime detests for no good reason. It’s only natural for them to form a group of ignorant racists to find some modern 21st century answers.
I’m not optimistic.